EARTH CLOSETS.

Tuapeka Times, Volume V, Issue 359, 27 May 1874, Page 3

EARTH CLOSETS.

(From the " Illustrated London News")

Labor as philanthropists may, drainage is always their rock ahead, and its heavy rate sends up the rent. Ihe cesspool is gradually becoming a thing of the past, the privy vault and the sewers are an institution. The poison too often sinks in its riverward course through the subsoil into the well ; and even at the point above tidal influence, whence water is supplied from the Thames, the river nymph — to whose " glassy wave " schoolboys have addressed so many copies of hexameters and lyrics is calculated to have received into her bosom the outpourings of 700,000 drains. And so the Calder receives the filth of all Halifax through the Hebble, and the two rivers flow on lovingly to the point where their water is filtered and supplies Wakefield. The Medlock and the Irwell are also " silent highways" for filth through Salford, and about two millions and a half have been laid out already on casting forth the refuse of London into the Thames.

Every experiment to deodorise water only ends in vanity and and vexation, and by slow degrees the Rev. Henry Moule.s doctrine, that in household service it is cheaper to to procure dry earth than to spoil water, meets with fuller acceptance. Mr. Wilson of Edgington Mains, of speaks Mr. Moule's method as the only one which practically effects the separation of the fertaksing matter from the water in which it is contained and points out that earth with much organic matter in it deodorises more rapidly than when it contains little. Ashes, soot, or charcoal, may all be used for this purpose, provided they are kept from wet ; but dry earth or clay subsoil, small and well sifted, are the most active deodorisers. Hence the peculiar applicability of earth instead of water to closets. The earth must be snpplied in detail and not in masses, and these layers are, in fact, the whole secret of the process. Its deodorising agency is so powerful that, when the deposits are removed and placed under cover, the mass smells like fresh loam. Every trace of the original and its accompaniments is completely absorbed that the earth can be nsed eight or ten times. The mesh through which it should be sifted is abont a fourth of an inch, and lib 9oz-, or 14 pint should desend from the box at each time of nsing. It has been argued that the necessary maniqulation would act practically as a veto on the system ; bnt it may be urged in reply that it is easier to carry dry earth up stairs than to pump water into a cistern, especially when frost has pipes in its grip. Public institutions have found no difficulty in its application. Through the influence.;of of Dr. Fawcus, who has triad several experiments upon it, the system which he commenced in the gaol of Alipore, near Calcutta, has been adopted in nearly two hnndred barracks and public buildings throughout the East. For two years past it has proved a great boon to the sick wards at Hitchin, and the National Rifle Associaton sent their testimony to its use at Wimbledon. Mr. Simms, in a memorandum on disinfection, dated "Privy Council Office, July 1866," also gives his official sanction to the eaath closets in country places, where proper drainage is not provided. Beyond this guarded recommendation Government has not as yet ventured to go. A little village in Sussex affords a striking proof that the " manipulation " of the system is by no means difficult. A few of the leading inhabitants have undertaken to work it, and enough is dried in a day and a night for 3s 6d (upon the same plan that bricklayers pursue with their sand) to supply fifty cottages. In two large towns companies have been formed for the same end. They have set up drying sheds and manure . warehouses, and not only remove the pails nightly, or clear out the vaults at intervals, but supply dry earth, if needed ; and a company in Bedford street, Covent Ga'den, manufactures earth-closets. It is. in truth, only the application of the night agency by which all the dust is removed in Paris, where no dustbins are allowed by law.

Custom in this matter would soon become secend nature when quickened by the discovery that *• it pays" to adopt. By pursuing it steadily cottagers are enabled to have very much larger vegetable crops, and farmers have been quite ready t» pay £3 a ton for such manure when they can get it Experiments have proved in fifteen cases that a quarter of an acre ma-mred with one cwt, of it, which had been kept five months and nsed seven times, can grow swedes one third heavier than ground dressed with superphosphate. Another farmer , substituted earth which had passed seven times through an earth-closet for crushed bones, at the rate of one hundred weight per acre, and grew a most- admirable crop of white turnips. Mr, Dickinson, of New Park Farm, Hampshire, also gives his, experience to the effect that the mixture is equal to crushed bones in power, more immediate in its action, and calculated to hut three years in the ground. Such are a few of the benefits of a system which might almost revolutionise our present drainage and add permanent health and wealth. As Mr. Moule well observes in his " Manure for the Million :"— " In God's providence there is no waste. It was never ment that even the privy-soiL or the sinkwater, or the water of the slop bucket should be useless ; still less was It meant they should poison fresh air and produce sickness," and too often death.