a flow of the sewage as small as 1 in 300 could be obtained, would be sufficient to command the agricultural district in their neighbourhood. But there is ample evidence to show that, by the use of the pump, cities lying low in valleys or on the coast could utilize their sewage with a profit. It has been proposed that the experiment should be tried at Brighton, where many elements of success are to be found. The drainage of this growing town is not yet accomplished. This is a great feature, inasmuch as a complete system of double drainage could be carried out-one that would allow a flow of the rainfall to the sea; and of the pipe water, or house-refuse, being gathered by itself into some tank, and thence pumped up in its concentrated state to the surrounding estates and farms.

We are told that 100 tons of sewage can be thus lifted 100 feet for a penny. A hundred tons of Brighton sewage undiluted with the rainfall would be worth three or four times the value of the ordinary mixed town-drainage; and we are told that the noble proprietors in the neighbourhood of the town would be willing to receive it on their land. Lord Essex, for example, would be too glad of it; and we should say that the ladies, who now bathe in the sewage which empties itself not far from the beach, would be equally glad of its absence-for here it is clearly "matter in the wrong place."

Lord Essex has given it in evidence that he applied 134 tons of sewage to two acres of wheat, and that on each he obtained an increase of produce worth

£3. 1s. 6d. over and above that of other unsewaged fields; and this, remember, with the sewage diluted with the rainfall. What his increase of produce would have been if he had used it in its concentrated state we scarce dare mention; but we feel not the slightest doubt that it would have been more than amply sufficient to pay his lordship and others who used it a sum sufficient to defray the plant and labour of pumping, and to go some way towards lowering the local rates.

At all events, we may feel quite certain that the enormous value of the liquid refuse of our houses is now ascertained beyond the slightest doubt; and there can be as little doubt, we think, that means will speedily be found to transport it from towns where it is a nuisance to fields where it will be a benefit, to the satisfaction of the tax-lightened ratepayer, the officer of health, and the agriculturist; and if not, we may reasonably ask the reason why not, as we are now spending annually many millions of money to bring the inferior fertilizer, guano, many thousands of miles to our fields.

Moreover, we may say that we must have this question answered at once, for it will not admit of delay. Agriculturists have been dreaming that the accumulations of guano are inexhaustible, and that thousands of years will elapse before the stores heaped on the islands off the coast of Peru will be consumed. Mr. Markham, however, who has made a careful estimate of the amount remaining in 1861, considered there was not more than 9,538,735 tons

remaining at that date, which, at the present rate of consumption, will only last until the year 1883.

Think of this, ye farmers who pin your faith on guano in twenty years' time, if you do not manage to utilize the sewage at your own doors, the foreign article will fail, and the predicted exhaustion of the vegetable mould of the country will really begin.

And have our agriculturists for a moment considered of what the home-made sewage manure consists? China manages to keep up the fertility of her soil by simply returning to it the elements that have been taken from it, in the shape of the excreta of the population; but it must be remembered that we import as well as produce fruits of the earth, and that our imports of food alone amount annually to £75,000,000,-in other words, our own home-made guano contains the fertilizing elements not only of our own soil, but of that of all countries on the earth, from which we receive food into our island to the yearly amount we have stated, and the whole of which is now allowed to run to waste.

We trust, in conclusion, that our "exhausted vegetable mould" will speedily give the lie to the prognostications of the philosophical agricultural chemists who have so frightened our landowners, and that the picture of England returning to its aboriginal condition of marsh and forest only dwells in their own too-vivid imaginations.

THE UNDER-SEA RAILROAD.

AFTER a man has been tossed, as in a blanket, for a couple of hours in one of the fast boats between. Dover and Calais, and after his mind and body have slightly recovered from the steady survey of the boiling sea his infirmities have compelled him to take, he is not unlikely to read with avidity any scheme which proposes to abolish those rough favours of Neptune altogether, which generally forerun and terminate his annual holiday abroad. Whilst we have yet our sea-legs upon us, Mr. James Chalmers greets us with a scheme for a Channel railway connecting England and France. With a vivid recollection of two hours of perfect misery, we can examine it with a perfectly unprejudiced mind.

We must not be supposed, however, to imagine that Mr. Chalmers is original in his idea, neither does he say as much; on the contrary, the persistence with which projectors have schemed to link our tight little island to the Continent is urged by him as a sign of the necessity that exists for its accomplishment. His claim is, that he offers his method as the only practicable one yet presented to the public; and we must say that, compared with the many visionary

projects that would-be engineers have given forth, Mr. Chalmers' seems simplicity itself.

Seven of these schemes have been put forth by Frenchmen, and five by Englishmen, a proportion in favour of our neighbours which possibly represents their superior horrors of sea-sickness. Three French projectors proposed tunnelling under the Channel; five English and two French proposed submerged tubes; a Frenchman proposes an arched railway or tunnel on the bottom, and an Englishman a mammoth bridge.

Of these schemes, that of the tunnel seems to have been received with most favour. The Emperor Napoleon-who seems to have a taste for solving geographical difficulties, himself suggested a scheme for severing the Isthmus of Darien, and powerfully supports the canalization of the Isthmus of Suez-only as late as 1857 received with no ordinary attention a scheme of M. de Gamond to annex England to France geographically by means of a tunnel. This project was a reversal of the mole's method of tunnelling. He proposed to form thirteen islands in the Channel, by depositing therein immense mounds of chalk and stones. Through these his project was to drive shafts, and, when at a given level, to tunnel east and west. The ostensible reason for the Emperor's abandonment of this scheme was the impediment these islands would give to the navigation; but we fancy the real reason was that he could not afford to throw money into the sea in so many directions at the same time.