THE PURITY OF RIVERS AND THE USE OF SEWAGE AS MANURE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5031, 9 May 1877, Page 3

THE PURITY OF RIVERS AND THE USE OF SEWAGE AS MANURE.

In a paper read by the Rev. Robert Thomson, at Glasgow, before the Section of Economic Science and Statistics, in connection with the British Association, the following remarks were made upon the means to be used in the preservation of the purity of rivers, and in the disposal of sewage as manure :—" It is hardly a question properly to be called scientific —it is one rather practical and sensible. Hitherto it lias only been regarded from the point of view of the towns having sewage for disposal. I shall take it from the opposite oue—viz., that of the farmers in want of the natural nourishment demanded by their almost exhausted fields. They say that year after year the land yields her substance to feed the towns, and when she asks for reciprocity, she is put off with some chemical artificial manufacture of some foreign importation, which stimulates without nourishing, and leaves exhaustion worse exhausted.

" To her difficulty no alleviation is promised by the expensive engineering schemes, which, looking npon sewage as an enemy to be destroyed, advocate the construction of expensive conduits to convey to and destroy it on our neighbor's seaboard, with the almost certain result of a legal protest from the landowners there, but most silent and practical protest from outraged nature in the form of a fever belt round our once beautiful and marine sanataria.

"Scientific men have declared that the yellow fever, and the miasma peculiar to the coast-line of some parts of Western Africa, is due to the refusal of the sea to take the decaying organic refuse thrown into it, and hurling it back upon the wasteful and prodigal earth to destroy the inhabitants if it may not nourish them.

" Not any more is the land difficulty solved by the utilization of a few acres to purify our sewage waste of waters. Not by any of those chemical processes which destroy the manure, whilst they affect to purify the streams and rivers of our lands.

" There is one process of which I have heard a good deal, which professes to extract from the polluted sewage the valuable constituents, to preserve them for agriculture, this very extraction purifying the waters at the same time, and as it seemed to promise all that could possibly be desired, I took the trouble to visit the places where it is at work, and I saw for myself, andheard from gentlemen well qualified to speak, as they spoke from experience, that all that was promised was performed. I saw the foul waters flowing on my right hand, then flowing clear and sparkling on my left; I saw the deposit turned into a rich wholesome-looking mould ; I saw the reoult of it in the figures given by the Corporation of Leeds, when they practically tried it on the fields against other manures ; I saw the roports of farmers about it ; and, what is still better, I saw the wheat and oats grown by it—such wheat and such oats as, I am bold to say, are not to be found surpassed in any field at this moment in Great Britain. The secret of it all (if that can be called a secret which is made no secret of) lies in this, that Nature's own, purifiers, charcoal, blood, and earth, are mixed with the polluted waters. To these elements tlio polluting substances have a greater affinity than they have to water, and, by a process which is well known to all chemists, thus leave the inferior for the superior attraction, and the water is purified in, I may truly say, almost a miraculous manner.

" Every man who is really interested should see for himself what Ihavescen with the greatest satisfaction, both at Knostrop sewage works of Leeds and at Aylesbury. It is perfectly applicable to Glasgow. It is the only process which appears suitable. It only requires to be set at work, and then introduce the manurial deposit to the farmers, and I feel confident it will pay all the cost .of extraction and constant purification of the waters, if indeed it does not ultimately yield a noble revenue to thoso who may in this great and truly patriotic work of preventing the pollution of our beautiful streams and lioblo rivers. " Now all this can be done at a trifling expense in outlay as well as iu working out this process compared with other schemes proposed for G-lasgow, one of which would cost two and a half millions at first, and an enormous outlay in working. I can heartily recommend the Leeds scheme as the best adapted for the oity of Glasgow, for its efficiency, capacity of almost universal applicability, and for its speedy application as well as moderate cost of construction of sewage works, and subsequent moderate expense of. operations ; besides

that, all the best part of the sewage is preserved for the purpose of agriculture, which cau he disposed of to great advantage in this part of Scotland, where there is a market for 500,000 to 1,000,000 tons annually, and when this manure becomes well known in the space of a few years, it should pay all the cost of working expenses, and interest on the original cost of works, and should become a source of municipal revenue. "By tin.! pvocss the destruction of the healthy condition of our teacoast towns would be avoided, and many evils consequent thereon, by utilising the sewage in this manner. "Uy this process the rivers Clyde and Kelvin, and all their tributaries, would be rendered again pure and odorless, as I have seen them in ray youth, when I have assisted at the salmon fishing, when I have seen at the centre of the harbor shoals of beautiful large salmon caught, for in former ages so prolific were these waters with salmon that it was an article of agreement between masters and apprentices that the latter stipulated with the former that they, when boarded at their masters' houses, were not to be compelled to partake of ealmon at breakfast more than three times in one week.

"We have uo hopes of such happy times ever returning, but the adoption of the process herein recommended will bring back some delightful approximation to the state of the waters of these rivers described aloove, with the other agreeable conditions consequent on the carrying out of such a useful and necessary improvement, alike now demanded by the law of the laud as well a 3 by the claims of a healthy sanitary system."