Thus we see that in the solid and fluid excrements of man and animals, all the nitrogen—­in short, all the constituent ingredients of the consumed food, soluble and insoluble, are returned; and as food is primarily derived from the fields, we possess in those excrements all the ingredients which we have taken from it in the form of seeds, roots, or herbs.

One part of the crops employed for fattening sheep and cattle is consumed by man as animal food; another part is taken directly—­as flour, potatoes, green vegetables, &c.; a third portion consists of vegetable refuse, and straw employed as litter.  None of the materials of the soil need be lost.  We can, it is obvious, get back all its constituent parts which have been withdrawn therefrom, as fruits, grain and animals, in the fluid and solid excrements of man, and the bones, blood and skins of the slaughtered animals.  It depends upon ourselves to collect carefully all these scattered elements, and to restore the disturbed equilibrium of composition in the soil.  We can calculate exactly how much and which of the component parts of the soil we export in a sheep or an ox, in a quarter of barley, wheat or potatoes, and we can discover, from the known composition of the excrements of man and animals, how much we have to supply to restore what is lost to our fields.

If, however, we could procure from other sources the substances which give to the exuviae of man and animals their value in agriculture, we should not need the latter.  It is quite indifferent for our purpose whether we supply the ammonia (the source of nitrogen) in the form of urine, or in that of a salt derived from coal-tar; whether we derive the phosphate of lime from bones, apatite, or fossil excrements (the coprolithes).

The principal problem for agriculture is, how to replace those substances which have been taken from the soil, and which cannot be furnished by the atmosphere.  If the manure supplies an imperfect compensation for this loss, the fertility of a field or of a country decreases; if, on the contrary, more are given to the fields, their fertility increases.

An importation of urine, or of solid excrements, from a foreign country, is equivalent to an importation of grain and cattle.  In a certain time, the elements of those substances assume the form of grain, or of fodder, then become flesh and bones, enter into the human body, and return again day by day to the form they originally possessed.

The only real loss of elements we are unable to prevent is of the phosphates, and these, in accordance with the customs of all modern nations, are deposited in the grave.  For the rest, every part of that enormous quantity of food which a man consumes during his lifetime ( say in sixty or seventy years), which was derived from the fields, can be obtained and returned to them.  We know with absolute certainty, that in the blood of a young or growing animal there remains a certain quantity of phosphate of lime and of the alkaline phosphates, to be stored up and to minister to the growth of the bones and general bulk of the body, and that, with the exception of this very small quantity, we receive back, in the solid and fluid excrements, all the salts and alkaline bases, all the phosphate of lime and magnesia, and consequently all the inorganic elements which the animal consumes in its food.