wheat, it must be evident that the improvement is very great."

I shall, in a short time, take one of Mr. Marshall's observations on drainage, embankments, engines, and enclosures, in connection with health and land, as a kind of sanitary text on which to comment; but before coming to this point I would notice the evidence of another witness, Dr. Edward Harrison, on the subject of health in the lower animals living on land, and supplying part of the land produce. Dr. Harrison has pointed out the connection between unhealthy land and the disease called "rot" in sheep. He informs us that the connection between humidity and the rot is universally admitted by experienced graziers, and it is a matter of observation that since the brooks and rivulets in the county of Lincoln have been better managed, and the system of laying ground dry by open ditches and under draining has been more judiciously practised, the rot has become less prevalent. Sir John Pringle was of opinion that persons have maintained themselves in good health during sickly seasons by inhabiting the upper stories of their houses, and "I have reason to believe," says Dr. Harrison, “that merely by confining sheep on high grounds they have escaped the rot." In illustration, this author communicates the following fact. A grazier for many years occupied a large portion of an unenclosed fen, in which was a shallow piece of water that covered about an acre and a half of land. To recover the part covered with water, for pasturage, he cut in it several open ditches to let off the water, and obtained an imperfect drainage. His sheep there immediately became liable to the rot, and in most years he lost some of them. One year the drains failed so entirely from the wetness of the season that the ground became an actual pond, and he sustained in that season no loss of his

flock. For a few succeeding years he was generally visited by the rot; but having satisfied himself, by experience, that whenever the field was, from the weather, either completely dry or completely under water his flock was free from disorder, he attempted a more perfect drainage, and succeeded in making the land dry at all times. From that time he lost no sheep from the rot.

ESSENTIALS FOR HEALTH FROM LAND.

Mr. Marshall has given us, in four words, the key to the whole question of health, and how to get it from land. Drainage, Embankments, Engines, Enclosures. These are indeed the means by which civilized man can make the health and wealth of land run side by side; the wealth to those who possess the land; the health to those who exist on it, as its living working power. pursue my thesis from these four suggestive heads.

DRAINAGE.

I shall

We have seen from what has already been said that drainage of land is the first essential to good health, of the land itself and of the animals which feed upon it. A model cultivator of land, for any purpose, will see that there is not an acre of dank ground on the whole of an estate submitted to cultivation; he will not over-drain, but he will drain thoroughly. That which he will specially avoid will be the formation of pools and of swamps on his land. When they appear spontaneously his land is not well drained. The evidence of the pool or the swamp declares that the rain water has no proper chance of escape, and that from a long distance around the central pool, lake, or bog, there is an over-abundance of water saturating the soil. What the precise amount of

water should be in a soil, in order to make it most productive of wholesome grass and good grain, has never been determined precisely; but, as a rule, the presence of water in pools, puddles, dank spots, and bogs, is sufficient to show that the land is super-saturated. When the land is duly and properly drained, health appears around it everywhere and in everything that can be utilized upon it. This is a simple but faithful reading. Sedge and rushes mean undrained, good produce means well drained pasture. In draining it is not necessary to lose the water that is drained off. To build a reservoir for the reception of the water that falls on an estate is a manageable proceeding, and a reservoir with strongly constructed walls and a proper overflow is, or might be, one of the most useful and profitable investments connected with an estate. The day will come when, from an exact knowledge of the composition of a soil, and the exact proportion of water required to render that soil fruitful for particular products up to its complete worth, the agriculturist will conserve the storm water falling on the soil, and will utilize it at pleasure, supplying dry places from it in cases of drought, and removing it from the spots in which it is causing undue saturation after periods of flood. This is all a matter of engineering with or against nature, whose ways are now sufficiently known to enable man, surrounded with good appliances and contrivances, to meet all the natural strains that may be put on him. I should predict that for the natural growth of healthy produce so much water is wanted for one useful product and so much for another; mangold wurtzel requires, I presume, a different hydration of soil from that demanded by wheat; wheat from that demanded by oats, and so'

on.

Soils may vary in this respect according to their

C

capacity for absorbing and retaining water, The practical study of this matter will become to the agriculturist of the future the sanitation of soil for growth and development, and will form a portion of positive knowledge universally accepted as a necessary part of education in the agricultural fraternity. Sedge and rushes will then be unknown on land, except as marks of bad cultivation of land, or as products that have to be utilised scientifically, according to the demand for them in the markets.

ment,

For the healthy management of land, the drainage, the simple removal of water, is not the only requireFor perfect health of land and of those who work it, it is necessary to remove, by drainage, all the dead organic material excreta known generally as sewage, and to restore that to the land as food for the land. "The sewage to the land, the water to the river," is the golden rule of good sanitation. The balance of power between land and life consists, in fact, in giving back to the land that which the land has lent to life. Food is organic substance that has passed through land. Animals living and grazing on land leave their waste of food on the surface, to be washed into the soil by the rain, recharge the soil, and renew or feed vegetation. This is the natural process, and man himself, living in favourable climes for outdoor existence, like the lower animals, gives back to the earth the organic débris which he produces. Hence the old Mosaic direction for the disposal of human sewage. But when men are brought to live in communities, and are cooped up in houses, and when the lower animals are cooped up in stables, sheds, and other closed places, where all functions of life are carried on in confined space, then the accumulations of waste passing quickly into putrefaction

become huge unwholesome masses of unproductiveness, and sources and causes of constant danger. Here, therefore, drainage comes in to remove the waste and give it over to the soil that is dying for it as for its natural food.

Up to the present time there has usually been the saddest mistake in this task of accommodating civilization to nature in this task of sewage distribution, for man even yet is by nature nomadic, and has in him still the old nomadic constitution, as if aggregation in city and town. were after all but a passing and transitory phase in his career through the ages. So he suffers. He allows evils to accumulate until they master him, and until they bring him into imminent danger of being swept away altogether by what he sometimes calls pestilence, sometimes famine, sometimes both combined, by a very easy process of combination of these disasters.

It is the duty of the scientific agriculturist, of all men, to correct this evil. He is bound to learn how to give health through land, by the artificial removal of excreted material, through properly constructed courses to the soil. So soon as he settles down to live amongst the crowded numbers of a community of his fellow men and of the animals they require for their wants, it should be his primary thought how he may convey all the sewage that men and animals produce back to the place where it is wanted, the soil that is calling for it. This stands first in the strict order of nature. After this there is a second essential, namely, the separation of rain or storm water from the sewage, with limitation of water to the lowest necessary degree, so that the soil may receive its requisite food in the same natural way as it receives it from animals feeding upon it, or as near to that method as human skill can devise. The removal of sewage should be