110

many places thrown out into the yard in most
pusse in the town.

Many of the privies are in a bad state and cannot
be made better in the lower parts of Bridge-street
and Hardy-street; if a-privy wore cleaned out to-
day, and it rained to-morrow, it would be full again.

I never met with any particular impediment in
discharging my duty; it has only been doubted
whether I could enter the premises.

I find that the present supply of water is generally
bad in the lower parts of the town, bad from perco-
lation from the river. Night soil at present has been
omptied into the river below the windmill. Very
little is used for manuring purposes.

Mr. Whitney has used it raw on his acre, and has
not found it answer, he won\'t use it now because
it stiffens the soil. I have mixed it with earth
myself, let it lie a year, and used it as manure, and
found it excellent manure. I mean the soil from the
privy-pit when full.

I have seen movable boxes used in several houses.
My experience is not very favourable; much efflu-
vium, much stench if the boxes are not lined. They
are then a greater nuisance than the privy-pit the
liquid drains through. People do not use ashes or
earth to deodorize. Ashes, and kitchen refuse, rags,
old shoes, are left in back yards to rot and stink; in
many places it is never carried away. I do not see
that I have any power to order the removal of such
things unless there were a Scavenging Act.

I cannot say the manual cost of cleaning a privy
properly. The general charge for cleaning the cess-
pool under a privy is 25s. I have known it done
for a pound. I don\'t know what the cost of re-
moving ashes would be.

There is offensive stagnant water in the water-
course passing through the premises of Messrs. Rout,
Richardson, and Harley, along Hardy-street; also a
great nuisance is created by the water coming down
Vanguard-street and remaining in a stagnant pool at
the back of the Postboy. At the back of Gloucester-
street it was blocked up by the effects of the flood.
I think it may be cleared.

Water lies badly between Trafalgar-street and
Waimca-street; all slops lie there and stagnate.

There is a nuisance in the Government school
privy. The gaol privies smell very badly.

I have power to destroy any pigsty within sixty
feet of any house or road, and to suppress it, if a
nuisance, at any distance. Not much nuisance with
that now.

No particular nuisance about the mud-flat. The
fellmonger\'s place is kept very creditably clean.
A great deal of ashes and rubbish are thrown over
the Haven-road wall.

I have never noticed any peculiar smell due to
the mud-flat, except what we call sea smell at low
tide; unless when dead, dead fish, cattle, or some-
thing of that sort be washed up.

There are very bad smells sometimes at the Salt-
water bridge, and all up the ditch behind the office
of the Board of Works. I cannot say from whence
it rises. I think the ditch should be cleaned and
deepened.

FARMERS\' LETTERS.

To the SECRETARY of the NELSON DRAINAGE COM-
MISSION.

SIR—I may reply to both your queries addressed
to mo in the same words—I do not think that
manure of either kind would be taken from the town
to the country in sufficient quantities to render the
proceeds from its sale worthy of notice.

My reasons for arriving at this conclusion are
apartly of a general character—such as the costly
nature of any attempt to force land by manuring,
and that, as a rule, it is only done where wages are
very low. It is much more true of this country than
the England. "That it is the law of production from
the land, that by increasing the labour, the produce
is not increased in an equal degree." Our mode of
renewing the strength of land, weakened by repeated
cropping, is the laying it down in-grass. In this
way, land is at least as profitably occupied as by
being cropped, and after a time its strength returns
without expense to the occupier. Whether from the
great evaporation in this climate, or other cause,
manure produces much less effect here than at home,
while the cost of applying it under similar circum-
stances is four times the great. The fact, therefore,
that certain manures are sought after and profitably
applied at home, affords in itself no ground for ex-
pecting a similar result in this country.

The country land does not immediately surround
the town, but is situated at a long distance away. I
will take my own farm, which is more conveniently
situated than the average—say nine miles from Nel-
son. I should have to pay 15s. per ton for carriage
from Nelson, but I put it at 10s., as its cost by a far-
mer\'s own carts. I cannot think that less than
twenty loads per acre of either manure mentioned in
your questions would be serviceable, which would
involve an outlay of £10, besides the cost of pur-
chase and of its application to the land, say £14 per
acre in all. In the poor lands (the like generality),
with previous gravel bottom, the benefit would pro-
bably not be felt after the second year. But in soil
of any character, I cannot see how any plan at all
all approaching to that named is to be repaid by its
increased production. But it will be said that the
farmers return carts will be manure free, or nearly
free of cost, except that of its purchase. I thus
few loads, and only a few, would be brought in this
way. Return carts are generally occupied more or
less by other articles, which could not be conveniently
carted along with manure, even though dead, and
were a railway, however, constructed to the Waimea,
where the cost of carriage would be very greatly re-
duced, it highly probable that the use of
manure such as you describe, especially that in its
most concentrated form, would become general and
extensive. But I do not think that the present de-
mand for town manure in the Waimea, even though
obtainable for nothing, would be worth taking into
consideration.

I am &c.,
Waimea, May 20. J. W. BARNICOAT.

To the PROVINCIAL SECRETARY, Nelson.

SIR—On my return from the country yester-
day, I received a letter from Mr. O. Brown,
Secretary to the Committee of Drainage of Nelson,
inviting me to give answers in writing, to your office,
on the following questions:—

1. "If a similar system is adopted, without the
   admixture of dry earth, will this species of manure
   find a market, and at what price?"

In answer to both these questions, I wish to state,
that I have had no practical experience with these
species of manure, and therefore beg to decline
giving an opinion as to the value of it.

With regard to the other question, whether there
will be a market for it, I am of opinion that there