Sewer manure. Statement of the course of investigation & results of experiments as to the means of removing the refuse of towns in water, and applying it as manure : with suggestions of further trial works (for voluntary adoption) of the practicability of applying sewer water as manures by subterranean channels; prepared for the consideration of the Committee of Works / by Edwin Chadwick, Esq., C.B., with appendices.

Edwin Chadwick

Date:: 1849

Credit: Sewer manure. Statement of the course of investigation & results of experiments as to the means of removing the refuse of towns in water, and applying it as manure : with suggestions of further trial works (for voluntary adoption) of the practicability of applying sewer water as manures by subterranean channels; prepared for the consideration of the Committee of Works / by Edwin Chadwick, Esq., C.B., with appendices. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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near Nottingham with constant and extraordinary success; I presume by surface watering, but I have not received the particulars. Liquid manure has been applied by surface watering in the kitehen-garden at Worsley, and, as I am informed, at a number of other places, with as marked an effect as upon grass-land. Mangel- wurzel, cabbages, and turnips have thriven remarkably upon it. A merchant of Philadelphia (U. S.) who was fond of horticulture, beat all competitors at a show there by the enormous size of his cabbages and other produce. His gardener was seen to draw a liquid from a large hogshead and dispense it, from time to time, to the plants with the watering-pot. There was an intense curiosity to divine what might be the elixir which produced so wondrous an effect. The merchant informed me that he at length yielded to the importunity. He had the top of the hogshead taken off and displayed the contents, the remains only of common stable-dung. He had had stable-dung put into the hogshead, filled it with water, and ordered his gardener to water the plants twice a week with the solution, renewing the water in the hogs¬ head until no smell remained there from the dung. He had done no more than this surface-watering regularly twice a week. Keeping in view such horticultural experience as the best guide for agricultural improvements, which will be effected chiefly by reducing the expense of the opera¬ tions, the question as to the practicability of the distribution of manure by some method of subterranean irrigation is now again brought under consideration, by the market gardeners’ declaration of the necessity of having the manure supplied at a depth below the surface, for the supply of the deep-rooted plants. I submit the following particulars for the guidance of experiments and trial works to determine the practicability of the attainment of that object One of the first points of inquiry appears to me to be, whether we may not avail ourselves of the faculty of the plants themselves to seek food or manures by their roots. In the course of the investigation of the general underground work of drainage and supplies of water, instances were presented of the roots of trees seeking for food suitable to them. When wooden pipes were in use for the conveyance of water under ground, for the supply of towns, before iron pipes were introduced, one cause of obstruction in the wooden pipes was the roots of trees getting into them. Mr Mylne, the Engineer of the New River Company, stated to me, that formerly if their wooden pipes were carried within thirty yards of trees, they were never safe'from having the pipes in time stopped up by the roots. The roots “ found” the joints and insinuated through them, and then spread out in “ foxtails” of fibrous matter, two or three feet long, which have in time filled the pipes and seriously checked the flow of the water. Similar intrusions have been frequently found in earthen drains and water-pipes; but it has been reported to me by a good observer that roots have not, under similar circumstances, entered open water-pipes of iron or lead. If it should appear that the roots are repelled from entrance by the rust or injurious properties of the metals, that would seem to be an important fact as to the selective powersTof the roots.

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