A practical example of the money value which lies in the refuse of a town, when removed in the cheapest manner, and applied in the form best adapted to production, viz., by a system of cleansing by water, is afforded in connexion with the city of Edinburgh. In the course of the sanitary inquiry in that city the particular attention of Dr. Arnott and myself was directed to the effects of some offensive irrigation of the land which had taken place in the immediate vicinity of that city. It appears that the contents of a large proportion of the sinks, drains, and privies of that city are conveyed in covered sewers to the eastern suburb of the town, where they are emptied into a stream called the Foul Burn, which passes ultimately into the sea. The stream is thus made into a large uncovered sewer or drain. Several years ago some of the occupiers of the land in the immediate vicinity of this stream diverted parts of it, and collected the soil which it contained in tanks for use as manure. After this practice had been adopted for a long period, the farmers in the vicinity gradually found that the most beneficial mode of applying the manure was in the liquid form, and they conducted the stream over their meadows by irrigation. Others, perceiving the extraordinary fertility thus obtained, followed the example, and by degrees about 300 acres of meadow, chiefly in the eastern parts of that city, but all in its immediate vicinity, and the greater part of it in the neighbourhood of the palace of Holyrood, have been systematically irrigated with the contents of this common sewer. From some of this land so irrigated, four or five crops a-year have been obtained; land once worth from 40_s._ to 50_s._ per acre now lets for very high sums. It is stated by a writer cited as an authority, on behalf of the parties interested,— “That the rent for which some of these meadows are let in small portions to cow-feeders varies on an average from 20_l._ to 30_l._ per acre. Some of the richest meadows were let in 1835 at 38_l._ per acre; and in that season of scarce forage, 1826, 57_l._ per acre were obtained for the same meadows. * * * The waste land called Figget Whins, containing 30 acres, and 10 acres of poor sandy soil adjoining them, were formed into water meadows in 1821, at an expense of 1000_l._ The pasture of the Figget Whins used to be let for 40_l._ a-year, and that of the 10 acres at 60_l._ Now the same ground as meadows lets for 15_l._ or 20_l._ an acre a-year, and will probably let for more, as the land becomes more and more enriched.”