andon their attempts to
build up a profitable business. Having been actively interested in the
enterprise from its inception, and having given constant attention to
the merits of the system, I am to-day more than ever convinced that the
solution of one of the most difficult problems connected with country
and village life is to be sought in its general adoption. The public
reports of sanitary officers in England, who have investigated the
subject to its foundation, fully confirm every thing that has been
claimed by the advocates of the earth-closet, unless perhaps in
connection with the incidental question of the value of the product as a
manure.

The only thing which now deters the authorities of some of the larger
manufacturing towns of the North of England from adopting the
dry-earth-system as a means of relief, under the sharp exaction of the
law that prohibits their further fouling of water-courses, is the belief
that the labor of bringing into the town the enormous amount of earth
required to supply such an immense number of closets, and the labor of
removing the product at frequent intervals, would be so great as to
constitute an insurmountable obstruction.

Prof. Voelcker, in a paper published in the Journal of the Royal
Agricultural Society, shows pretty conclusively that even the use of the
same earth four or five times over, although perfectly successful in
accomplishing the chief purpose of deodorization, fails to add to it a
sufficient amount of fertilizing matter to make it an available
commercial manure. Extended experience in small villages and public
institutions seems to confirm his view, that, if the earth-closet is to
be adopted by towns, they cannot depend either on farmers buying the
manure, or undertaking the labor of supplying and removing it. It is
estimated, that, for a population of one hundred thousand persons, there
would be required seventy-five tons of earth per day, to say nothing of
heavy refuse matters which would be thrown into the closets, and would
increase the amount to be removed. Even the quantity required for a
village of a few hundred inhabitants, if it were to be brought in and
carried out, would entail a considerable cost for handling.

I have recently concluded an experiment of six years' duration, the
result of which seems to show that this objection to the adoption of the
earth-closet system may be set aside, or at least reduced to such
proportions as to make it unimport