problem of sanitation is to cleanse the dwelling day by day, and if this can be done at a profit so much the better.  While the ultra-civilized Western elaborates destructors for burning garbage at a financial loss and turns sewage into the sea, the Chinaman uses both for manure.  He wastes nothing while the sacred duty of agriculture is uppermost in his mind.  And in reality recent bacterial work has shown that faecal matter and house refuse are best destroyed by returning them to clean soil, where natural purification takes place.  The question of destroying garbage can, I think, under present conditions in Shanghai, be answered in a decided negative.  While to adopt the water-carriage system for sewage and turn it into the river, whence the water supply is derived, would be an act of sanitary suicide.  It is best, therefore, to make use of what is good in Chinese hygiene, which demands respect, being, as it is, the product of an evolution extending from more than a thousand years before the Christian era.”

The storage of such waste in China is largely in stoneware receptacles such as are seen in Fig. 109, which are hard-burned, glazed terra-cotta urns, having capacities ranging from 500 to 1000 pounds.  Japan more often uses sheltered cement-lined pits such as are seen in Fig. 110.

In the three countries the carrying to the fields is oftenest in some form of pail, as seen in Fig. 111, a pair of which are borne swinging from the carrying pole.  In applying the liquid to the field or garden the long handle dipper is used, seen in Fig. 112.

We are beginning to husband with some economy the waste from our domestic animals but in this we do not approach that of China, Korea and Japan.  People in China regularly search for and collect droppings along the country and caravan roads.  Repeatedly, when walking through city streets, we observed such materials quickly and apparently eagerly gathered, to be carefully stored under conditions which ensure small loss from either leaching or unfavorable fermentation.  In some mulberry orchards visited the earth had been carefully hoed back about the trunks of trees to a depth of three or four inches from a circle having a diameter of six to eight feet, and upon these areas were placed the droppings of silkworms, the moulted skins, together with the bits of leaves and stem left after feeding.  Some disposition of such waste must be made.  They return at once to the orchard all but the silk produced from the leaves; unnecessary loss is thus avoided and the material enters at once the service of forcing the next crop of leaves.