Excepting the small proportion that is stored up in the bodies of the
growing young, which is fully offset by that contained in the bodies
of the dead, the constituents of the food are returned to the air by
the lungs and skin, or are voided as excrement. That which goes to the
air was originally taken from the air by vegetation, and will be so
taken again: here is no waste. The excrement contains all that was
furnished by the mineral elements of the soil oil which the food was
produced. This all passes into the sewers, and is washed into the sea.
Its loss to the present generation is complete."
... "30,000,000 bushels of corn contain, among other minerals, nearly
7000 tons of phosphoric acid, and this amount is annually lost in the
wasted night-soil of New-York City. [Footnote: Other mineral
constituents of food--important ones, too--are washed away in even
greater quantities through the same channels; but this element is the
best for illustration, because its effect in manure is the most
striking, even so small a dressing as twenty pounds per acre, producing
a marked effect on all cereal crops. Ammonia, too, which is so important
that it is usual in England to estimate the value of manure in exact
proportion to its supply of this element, is largely yielded by human
excrement.
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