Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 July 1875 — Dry Earth as a Deodorizer. [ARTICLE]

Dry Earth as a Deodorizer.

Several closets at tlie Agricultural College are built on ground slightly sloping, with the back side toward the "foot of the slope. No pits or. holes are dug. Along the back side are doors, turned down horizontally and hung on hinges by the upper edge. The doors usually hang down to the ground, but may be easily raised to remove night-soil when necessary. A small room in the same building is filled, in dry time, with dry muck, loam, or dust from the road. Clay is better than sand. Every day, or every other day, or twice a day, a small quantity is shoveled into each closet. Copperaswater, lime, plaster, or other deodorizers are also used in addition to dry earth. Every few weeks, or even once or twice a year for a small family, the night-soil is carted away to the compost heap. If cared for as above there is almost no unpleasant odor, nor is it more disagreeableFto cart away than so much manure from a barnyard. The advantages of some such mode are: The closets may be cheaply made and kept nearly free from unpleasant odor; they may consequently be placed much nearer the house, or even connected with it; there is no pestilential filth filtering into adjacent wells, or otherwise causing “ mysterious epidemics” in the family; the compost heap is increased in value. Something like this, or better than this, must some day become the universal custom in all the best private houses, schools, railway depots and hotels. Slops from the kitchen can be run upon aheap of dirt, which may bt occasionally shoveled over and changed after it has absorbed a good deal of filth. It is then well worth removing to use as a fertilizer. It is better than running underground into a pit, where the odors generally find some way of escape, often into the kitchen, on account of some defect or stoppage of the pipes. The use of dry earth is vastly better than to wash the filth into a sewer, thence into a river, to contaminate the air and water. A little mouse, a dead frog or squirrel, or a few dead worms will spoil the water of a well so every one will smell it and refuse to drink it. The same subjects are completely deodorized by a small shovelful of dry earth. — Prof. Beal, of Michigan Agricultural College.