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 ultracivilized 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.”
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Fig. 109.—Receptacles for human waste.
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 often-
