GOOD IN THINGS EVIL.

Evening Star, Issue 3018, 21 October 1872, Page 4

GOOD IN THINGS EVIL.

The town of Bradford lias, it seems, determined to get rid of its sewage—we should rather say to utilise it—on a prinbiple suggested many years ago by Prince Albert, and now for the first time thrown into practical form. The sewage is forced upwards through bed; of charcoal, which so completely absorb all that is noxious, that the stream issues perfectly clear and limped from the monster filter. The charcoal in lime absorbs more tar n twice its own weight of maiune, so valuable that the town expects to realise a haiulsome revenue, and the agricultural population in the n ighborhood to receive a most important benefit, from that which i ther cities lu.ve spent enormous sms to throw awoiy. Kor do the advantages of this system end here. It is discovered that the host and cheapest charcoal is that manufactured from peat. If the Bradford system should prove a success, of which experiments leave little dout, it is more than probable that other great cities will follow the example. Practical men in England declare that it is far from impossible that the Irish bogs may prove a source of wealth to that country scarcely less important than the coalfields to England. Aor do the public benefits anticipated by the inventors end with this. It has been proved that land from which peat has been removed is capable of being very profitably fanned, so that the descendants of the present generation of Irishmen may hope to see the Bog of Allen itself waving with golden corn, or at least alive with liockß and herd.

It surely must be a mere question of time whether we are to eontinue impoverishing the earth by throwing into the sea the riches taken from the soil. In so doing we are settmg at nought the most important lessons to be derived from nature. Throughout all her processes there reigns paramount a principle of “ conservation, ” as the learned call it. Beasts and vegetables alike in their natural state return to the soil all that they take from it, and with interest too, for they take much from the atmosphere, and from the sun’s heat, with which they enrich the earth. Man alone, while his very first object is to multiply the earth’s productions, has for generations been as systematically robbing the soil of its own. This, however, ia not all, for a great city like Loudon with the most lavish expenditure of its unparalleled wealth can keep her streets and courts and even her lordly Be'gravian squares only imperfectly sweet and clean, and in accomplishing this imperfect process is forced to poison a noble river, and depopulate a large district. If the Bradford experiuient succeeds, there can be little doubt that the local taxation of cities will be largely superseded by a revenue derived from that which has been their very heaviest item of expenditure.

Whether the iN T ew Zealand settlements in general, and Nelson in particular, can apply the system, will of course depend chiefly upon the price at which charcoal can be procured in large quantities. It is, however, very certain lhat a ittle care and good organisation and economy of the “rubbish” wo taste, at the cost of much labor and money, would make the importation of manures unnecessary. The process of depletion, consequent on our collecting so large a proportion of the produce of tuc country into cities only to throw it into the sea, is one that cannot be long persisted in with impunity. ______________