Note 140 — XV.

Not alone this oil-cake, but ground horns and bones, hair from the beard, and nail-parings, rust, ashes, and even human excrement are used as manure. And it is a singular fact that the price of the latter varies according to the race of men by whom it has been evacuated. The succulently nourished flesh-eating English and Americans are in this respect in far greater demand than the more sparely-fed cross-breeds; while the Chinese, subsisting almost exclusively upon fish and vegetables, are in respect to the value of their fæces as manure, behind every other race inhabiting the country. The price of this manure varies with the quality from one dollar to three dollars the picul. This custom of collecting and disposing of human excrement for manure is much more extensively observed in the interior of the Empire than in the provinces along the coast. "If," writes M. Huc, the well-known missionary,—"if we were not aware to what perfection the denizens of the Celestial Empire have carried the art of manuring, one would be at a loss how to reconcile the fondness of John Chinaman for making money with the conveniences free of all charge which the proprietors of the soil everywhere erect for the comfort of travellers. There is not a city nor a village in which this is not universally the case. In the most crowded streets, or the most out-of-the-way abandoned spot, one frequently marvels to find these "cabinets" in cane-work, earth, or even masonry. One is almost tempted to believe he is in a country where the care to provide plenty of public latrines is pushed to the extreme. Utilization, however, furnishes a sufficient explanation of all these edifices."