communities in which they occur. All that is sacred in the obligations of one man to another, all that is prudent in the economy of everyday life urges, upon our legislators, our corporations, and our people the necessity of an honest, energetic, and earnest determination, that the terrible blot of thousands being annually carried off by preventive diseases should no longer disgrace at once our boasted Christianity and civilization.

We have received a letter from Mr. George Greaves, M.R.C.S., an active sanitarian in Manchester, from which we publish (with his permission) the following extracts :—

"MANCHESTER, Nov. 23, 1866.

"Permit me to thank you for the very vigorous exposé of the sanitary abominations of Manchester made in the last number of your Journal. If anything would bring the Authorities to a sense of their duty, such writing would. But I fear the case is a hopeless one,* and that while the present régime lasts we must continue to breathe an atmosphere more or less loaded with the emanations from feculent matter, in various stages of decomposition. Thanks to our good water-supply-the one sanitary benefit conferred upon us by the Corporation-we have escaped Cholera. This fact was cited by the TownClerk at one of the meetings of the recent Social Science Congress, to prove that our midden-system is not injurious to health. It would almost have been better for us, in the end, if we had had a smart epidemic of Cholera. The deaths from Fever (chiefly Typhus) have in the two last weeks been 20 and 22, and our death-rate last week was one death higher than that of Liverpool."

These statements afford striking confirmation of the views expressed by the author of the above article; and moreover, we suspect that if the cause of the Cholera outbreak in Liverpool could be traced, it would be found to be in some way connected with the water-supply. That has been (until the recent floods) notoriously deficient, and in a Report published by Mr. Duncan, the Liverpool Water Engineer, in July last, about the time of the outbreak of Cholera, he said: "The Committee are aware that the water now at command is insufficient to admit of its being kept constantly on. Thirty gallons per person per day are not considered more than enough for each person, of the entire population. At the present time we are short of that quantity by about 33 per cent.; and I may add that, on a very recent occasion, evidence was given by an authority to the effect that to the scarcity of water have been traced demoralization, disease, and death."

In the same Report, he says of three wells, two of which are situated in the town (Water Street, Hotham Street, and Soho): "The waters of these wells are hard, inferior in quality, costly in obtaining, compared with those of others, and would not be used, did not necessity compel."

During the existence of Cholera, suspicion fell upon those wells. They were permanently closed, and when it was attempted to raise a discussion on the cause of their discontinuance, silence was the order of the day; but recently again there was a Report from Mr. Duncan, published in November,

*Mr. Greaves does not refer to Salford.

in which he says of those wells: "1st. As regards Hotham Street . . . the water is not good, and costly to obtain. It is situated in a densely-populated district, where no well can be insured against pollution." "As regards

.

Soho Well . . . the water inferior, costly, and objectionable."
Water Street Well appears to be still used.

We make these observations with a view to add further evidence to that cited by Dr. Lankester, not at all to draw invidious comparisons. The Liverpool Water Authorities deserve well of the town, and they merit (what up to the time these remarks are written they have not received) the support of the Council, in their endeavours to extricate Liverpool from a grave difficulty by providing the town with a large and constant water-supply.

We would, however, draw the attention of Mr. Greaves, as well as that of the author of the foregoing article, to the 49th Section of the Sanitary Act of 1866, and would ask them, whether, with their strong conviction of the danger to which the inhabitants of their respective cities are exposed through the neglect of the Local Authorities, it would not be desirable that they should induce their townsmen to bring the facts stated by them under the notice of the Home Secretary. An inquiry was lately held in Liverpool in connection with a similar grievance to that complained of by Mr. Greaves—namely, the manure wharves within the borough, and after an impartial hearing before Mr. A. Taylor (whose industry and demeanour cannot be too highly lauded) an official intimation was sent down to Liverpool from the Home Office politely limiting the time for the discontinuance of the wharves in the towns.

If the Home Secretary be firm, and insist upon compliance with his courteously-worded request, he will deserve great praise for having broken the ice, in putting the Act into operation; and it will no doubt be gratifying to Mr. Bruce, M.P., the framer of the Act, to find it so soon carried out.

The influence of this decision will be felt in every town where such abominations exist.

THE EDITORs.

CHRONICLES OF SCIENCE.

1. AGRICULTURE.

THE Cattle Plague has at length dwindled to altogether insignificant proportions. The number of cases reported weekly is rarely more than 10; and an occasional aggravation of the disease, or its reappearance now and then in old localities, raising the weekly total to 20 or 30, while it no doubt shows what a malignant disorder we still retain among us, may, we hope, be taken to be merely the occasional flare of an expiring flame. How much we owe to the policy of extermination, rather than attempted cure, may be seen by the results of the opposite system, as witnessed both in Holland and among ourselves. In the annual address, recently given by the President of the Royal Agricultural Society, it was pointed out that the number of cases reported in two weeks-the one in September, 1865, and the other in September, 1866, was exactly the same. Unrestricted cattle traffic during the two months following the former period, had swelled the tale of cases up to thousands. Destruction of affected stock and absolute isolation of infected places during the two months following the corresponding week of 1866, had reduced the disease almost to extinction. In Holland again, during the past summer, when here the disease was yielding to restrictive measures, it grew to lamentable proportions-rising from two or three hundred cases weekly during June, to nearly eight times as many in September. There is certainly sufficient guidance for us here as to the policy to be followed if the disease should reappear among us in anything like its original severity. Up to the present time about 5 per cent. of the whole cattle stock of Great Britain have been attacked, while of the whole stock upon infected farms, nearly 60 per cent. took the disease. Of the total number of attacks whose results were known, 35 per cent. were killed; 51 per cent. died; and 133 per cent. recovered.

The utilization of Town Sewage was the subject of a conference at Leamington during October, which was attended by a number of gentlemen interested in the solution of the difficulties surrounding the subject. These difficulties are almost entirely the result of an extension of the water-closet system, by which the waste of houses, no longer received into cesspools and carted away to market-gardens, is washed into culverts, and thence pollutes our rivers. The remedy offered by one party to this discussion is the irrigation of grass

lands with the drainage water, which thus becomes clarified before reaching the river, and yields a valuable produce during the process. The other plan consists in the substitution of earth-closets for water-closets in our houses. It only needs that a storage of dry earth be provided for use in this way, and occasionally replenished; that the prejudices of servants be removed or overruled; and that frequent removals of the boxes be provided for. A well-arranged system of scavenging would then be easily carried out with perfect inoffensiveness, both in the house and out; and we should have a most valuable manure, which might be carried, load by load, to farms all round our towns, where loads of top soil for similar use would be readily obtained in exchange for it, the difference in value being paid. The difficulty of displacing the existing system would, however, be very great; and, committed as we are by an enormous expenditure to the plan of keeping our towns clean by washing into drains, it is not at all likely that the earth-closet system will be adopted, except in detached houses or small villages. Meanwhile, at Croydon, at Barking, Rugby, and elsewhere, evidence is accumulating that the irrigation of grass lands with filthy sewage water, is both a perfectly inoffensive and a profitable process.

A meeting of gentlemen interested in the Utilization of Sewage was held in Liverpool in December, and owing probably to the presence of Lord Robert Montagu, who delivered an admirable address on the subject, the attendance was very numerous, and included the élite of the town and neighbourhood. There the advocates of the Earth-Closet were in a decided minority, for the reasons stated-viz. that the system is not suitable for large towns, where the quantity of earth to be carted would be enormous, and because arrangements have already been entered into between the Liverpool Corporation and the Sewage Company, which promoted the meeting, for the utilization of all the sewage of the town.

Most of the statements made by Lord Robert Montagu were repetitions of what is already known to agriculturists, and has been announced from time to time in these pages, but it may be of interest to our readers to know that in Liverpool it is intended to intercept the sewage at the outfall of the sewers, and at first to experiment with it upon the sandy soil skirting the Lancashire and Yorkshire line from Liverpool to Southport. There is a large tract of country all about the north side of Liverpool, which is at present a mere sandy waste, but no doubt the application of sewage water will render it fertile and suitable for the growth of rye-grass, and if the promoters of this sewage scheme can at the same time fertilize waste land, and render the most unhealthy town in England more healthy, they will confer a double favour upon society. They have our very best wishes for their success.

Professor Voelcker has lately given a lecture on the application

of manures before the London Farmers' Club, which is a remarkable illustration of the progress made towards a satisfactory relationship between scientific teaching and farm practice. Instead of treating vegetable growth as a purely chemical phenomenon; or supposing, as lecturers on agricultural chemistry seemed formerly to do, that it only needs the supply of elements in manure to ensure a corresponding assimilation of them by the growing plant, we now learn from the chemist what we already knew by experience, that luxuriance of growth and abundance of produce depend as much upon the mere question of even and uniform distribution of food for plants-as much in fact upon its accessibility-as upon the increase of its supply. We are told, for example, that an inferior guano well powdered and mingled with a sufficient quantity of diluent material so as to ensure its even distribution through the land, may be a greater help to the fertility of the soil and a greater fertilizer of the current crop than a better guano imperfectly applied. It is a truth of the same kind, which Dr. Voelcker also told us, that no manure at all upon a stiff clay land well tilled will tend to its fertility rather than a heavy dressing of farm dung applied when the land is soft and liable to be poached by the horses and carts employed in putting it on.

The application of farm manure as a top dressing in dry weather is now confidently advocated-even though a scorching sun and driving winds should cause the separation of all evaporable matter from it. There is no loss of ammonia during the putrefaction of farm dung. The loss which it suffers during that process is due to the washing of soluble salts out of it by rain. And if the dung be spread at once upon the land, all its valuable constituents will find their way into the soil.

Among the other topics which have occupied the agricultural world during the past quarter, is the growing organization of tenant farmers in Chambers of Agriculture, through which their voice may be heard in public discussions, and through which their views may be influentially urged on Government. We must also refer to the attempt of the Royal Agricultural Society to promote agricultural education by the addition of their prizes to the list of distinctions offered for competition before the University examiners of middleclass schools. And lastly, we may mention that, moved by the disasters of the past harvest season, the Society of Arts is about to offer a prize for any contrivance or machine which shall artificially accomplish or facilitate the drying process on which our hay and corn harvests depend for the quality of their produce.