, 1877-01-28
THE USES OF TOWN-sEwAGE

| Ihe question OF the utilization of town.
sewage is being very generally discussed il
England at the present time. The London
Times arrives at the conclusion, after ex.
amining the experiments of the past ter
years, that 81 time, which dispels many illu.
alons, has for some years apparently destroy.
ed the conviction, once firmly held, that Lon
don and all our larger towns possessed in
their sewers and cesspools q subterranesn
treasure-store of manurial wealth." In the
report Of Committee appointed by the
Local Government Board Of London to visit
q number Of localities where town-sewage
is employed on farms, or is disposed Of by
land filtration or BY mechanical md chemical
processes, it is stnted that @'the Committee
do not know of single case of town refuse
or of sewage or its manipulated solids in
has consequently been local disappointment
and accumulations Of some thousand tons Of
manufactured manure, nominally worth seV-
eral pounds sterling per ton, cumbering the
places Of manufacture because such prices
are not realized" The i'll success in fact
which has attended tho experiment in the
use of sewage as manure in England is very
clearly shown by the following extract from
the report:
The successful management OF animals and the
proper cultivation OF crops under ordinary c1rcuuu
stances require 4 fur amount OF intelligence and
experience, but successfully to carry out all the
details Of these matters upon sewage farm where
there ia 50 little to guide the practical farmer, and
60 much to con!ound his past experience and upset
his previous calculations. Is, indeed hard task
and as most sewage fu1ms are at present under the
control OF ever changing Town Councils and Local
Boards, whose members must, az a rule, be isno
rant OF practical agriculture, anl whose theories
upon the subject may be wild and visionary, is 1t
surprising that such poor returns have hitherto
suited froE, the application Of townscwagc to the
growth of crops:
On the Continent, however, very SUCCESS
full experiments havo been made. 1t Ley
den, Amsterdam, and Paris, by the use Of
the pneumatic system, tho refuse is carried
direct from the houses through pneumatic
channels worked from pumping station
aud delivered into receptacles, whence it
is distributed over the land, and the
crops upon such lands have been per-
feet SUCCESS The City Of Berlin has
been divided into five districts for drain
age, each with its pumping-station. The
entire cost Of the sewerage works is esti-
mated at $40, ZOO, ,000 To utilize the sew
age, the city has purchased 1000 acres of the
light sandy soil north of the city and the
same area south of the city, over which
Is, ,oo0, ,oo0 gallons of sewage are pumped
daily: By this means the city is reclaiming
i 200 acres of waste land, as the sand CON-
pletely absorbs and oxidizes the sewage,
and in addition to this is purifying the River
Spree, which has hitherto been the recepta-
Gle of the sewage Of the whole city. In
fluenced by the success of experiments On
the Continent, the English Committee has
the process Of land-irrigatiou
for agricultural purposes whenever local con-
ditions arc favorable, and that towns on the |
seacoast or tidal estuaries turn their sewage |
into the sea below the line Of low water.