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“Though purple may have symbolized a higher order, it reeked of a lower ordure,” Dr. Grovier writes in his book, “The Art of Colour.”

Government entomologists imported dozens of species of beetles to address several problems, among them fouled pastures, slowing decomposition and disease-carrying flies in ordure.

“It is I, Abigail,” she says, standing there with ordure on her dress, having been booted out of a carriage.

“The ordure and other evacuations of the sick, were allowed to remain in the most offensive state imaginable....It was, in fact, a great human slaughter-house.”

The alternative — trying to cram all this ordure back into its closet and forget we ever saw it — is, I hope, unthinkable.