Colonel Ewart, at any rate, impressed his corps, and after about 1866 one began to see the word FOUL painted up over gratings into which the soldiers were to pour their slops. A civilian, James Blackburn, also a friend of Menzies, was employed by the War Office to deal with the camp sewage on about 100 acres of rough heather-covered land close by, and he, knowing his business, watched what came down the sewers in wet weather and kept the Royal Engineers up to the Menzies standard. [Sidenote: Mr. Blackburn’s successful management.] Together with this initial advantage of having a regular volume of sewage not much affected by storm water to deal with, Mr. Blackburn had many drawbacks in the “pan,” as it is usually called, of iron conglomerate underlying the very irregular surface which was pitted all over with holes from which gravel or sand had been dug many years ago; but he persevered until he had got nearly all the area to bear good crops, when he entered the Camp Farm in competition for the Royal Agricultural Society’s 100_l._ prize in 1879 for the best managed sewage farm in the United Kingdom. The Report of the Judges at that competition is recorded in the Society’s Proceedings 1880, giving full statistics except financial accounts, which Mr. Blackburn withheld because he was then in treaty with the War Office for new terms after fourteen years’ work on the War Department Farm. My impression after reading the judges’ reports and having seen the farm a year or two previously to its date, is that, if the condition as to the production of the financial accounts could have been fulfilled, the first prize would have been awarded to the Camp Farm instead of jointly to those of Bedford and to Wrexham. Mr. Blackburn had built a big wooden shed and sublet it to a man who bought his ryegrass for some fifty cows (for whose milk there was a great demand in the camp), so this subtenant made a tempting offer to the War Office and got a fourteen years’ lease of the whole farm, while Blackburn retired in disgust. I wish to write only from knowledge of facts, and will therefore take up my narrative again in 1895, after an interval of some fifteen years. [Sidenote: Neglected state of, in 1895.] In the month of May 1895, I was called upon to visit the Camp Farm and report to Mr. Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the Secretary of State for War at that date. I found the whole farm in a deplorable condition of neglected nuisance, stagnant lakes of sewage retained here and there by banks of earth, buildings and fences in decay, and the greater part of the camp sewage passing, by pipes laid by its tenant, under a road which forms the lower boundary of War Department land, to some rough meadows held by their tenant from civilian owners for the purpose of saving him the trouble of spreading the sewage over the sloping surface of the War Department Farm—work which required the use of a land surveyor’s level and staff.