THE KITCHEN MIDDENS OF THE MODERN SAVAGE.
[To ?RR EDITOR or TUN "SPE0TATOR.1
Sin,—The part which you have always taken in preserving the beauties of wild England encourages me to hope that you may lend your influence to check an evil which is rapidly defacing many parts of our countryside. I refer to the ever- increasing practice of carting dusthole rubbish on to the fields under the plea that it is valuable manure. Hundreds of tons may be seen heaped up outside certain country towns, and dirty rags and paper, scattered by the wind, defile the beautiful fields and hedgerows for a mile or more around. The distress which such a sight causes to all lovers of rural beauty is of far less consequence than the demoralising example afforded to a part of the community already very indifferent about such things. It is of little avail for public, : bodies to provide waste-paper baskets in the parks if the
same authorities are utterly careless as to what becomes of their town refuse after they have contracted for its removal. If the stuff were properly treated in a destructor, it would make harmless material for roads; when used as "manure" it is an eyesore, and certainly a danger to health, not only from its horrible smell, but on account of the attraction it .offers to rats. These modern kitchen middens are so largely composed of tin cans and broken bottles that their value as manure must be almost nil. Indeed, a friend of mine who bought some land on to which town refuse had been carted found that nothing would grow there until be had bad the stuff deeply buried, a some- what costly proceeding. But the plea that it is manure makes the matter a difficult one to deal with, and some recent correspondence in Country Life shows that if a farmer wishes to dress his land with broken crockery, dm, his landlord is practically powerless to stop it. In many cases dusthole rubbish is probably put on to the fields because the contractor has nowhere else to bestow it. But some are more fortunate.
One refuse contractor happened to rent some land bordered by beautiful sloping cliffs covered by a thicket of tall gorse and blackthorn. Having little opinion of the manure value of dusthole rubbish, be wasted no time in spreading it on his fields, but simply tipped it from his carts over the edge of the cliff, and went on doing so until the concealed but ever- advancing avalanche protruded on to the seashore a hundred feet below. In a minor degree this kind of thing goes on all over the country, and must continue to do so until public Opinion insists upon proper methods of dealing with dusthole
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