Sewage disposal : report of a committee appointed by the President of the Local Government Board to inquire into the several modes of treating town sewage / presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty.

  • Great Britain. Local Government Board. Committee to Inquire into the Several Modes of Treating Town Sewage.
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sewage disposal : report of a committee appointed by the President of the Local Government Board to inquire into the several modes of treating town sewage / presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    to other ground for the purpose of making hay, even if a suitable site is conveniently situated, will be very costly. It therefore appears to us that upon an extensive sewage-farm, where a con- stant demand for all the rye-grass grown cannot be depended on, a machine for making hay by artificial means should be provided. Drying heavy crops of sewage-grown grass by artificial heat must; however, be a slow, costly, and tiresome process, and should never be resorted to unless necessity compelled this form of deal- ing with it, and when it appears to be the only way to prevent the total loss of the crop during continuous wet weather. We believe the best machine for the purpose is one which is the inven- tion of Mr. W. A. Gibbs, of Gilwell Park, Essex, to whom the gold medal of the Society of Arts was awarded a few years ago for the ingenious apparatus which bears his name. The length of time which a plant of irrigated Italian rye-grass lasts varies considerably. On some farms it has been ploughed up after one years cropping. On other farms the practice has been to keep it down so long as there is a good plant, and it can be kept free from weeds. By fresh seed being sown among the old plants, Italian rye-grass thus treated, has lasted seven or eight years. Its more usual duration is, however, from two to three years, and as there seems to be a common belief that this plant can only produce a certain weight of grass, it may follow that the quicker the growth the more readily the plant will be exhausted. It was a matter of pleasure and some surprise to us to find how toifn sewage benefited two such distinctly different forage plants as Italian rye-grass and lucerne. The latter, it is well known, grows with one deep tap-root, while the rye-grass has a dense mass of fibrous rootlets, which extend upon and over the surface of the land. At Paris the favourite green crop for sewaere appeared to be lucerne, which at the time of our inspection seemed to flourish remarkably well under sewage irrigation, and to produce heavy crops of the most valuable provender. The gravelly soil and the warm climate of the district no doubt are particularly adapted for sewage irrigation, and this may be the reason why a direct appli- cation of sewage to the growth of vegetables seems to answer better than with us. The culture of Italian rye-grass has only recently been introduced on the Paris sewage-farm, but its success is so marked that it may possibly take the place of lucerne as the staple green crop. English fanners have by some been considered over cautious in not embarking their capital in'the costly cultivation of sewage-farms, but on our inspection of the Paris farms it appeared much more strange to us that so many French cultivators, whose little patches of land intersect the Paris sewage-farm, had not all availed them- selves of the free use of the sewage. Many, no doubt, have done so, but it was difficult to.comprebend how some of the farmers preferred to grow their miserably small crops when the adjoining c 2