of this to be now made available, we shall have the other half, amounting to £250,000, gained by the proposed mode of collection; and adding this to the £134,000 estimated saving, we have a total of £384,000 annually available for the expenses of construction and repair of apparatus, and current cost of collecting, raising and treating the sewage of the metropolis. This sum will endow thirty-eight stations with an annual income each exceeding £10,000, for interest of capital in first construction and current expenses of working and treating. And this number of stations appears fully adequate to realize all the economy of power which can be attained by judiciously providing for several levels in each district of the metropolis."1

Mr. Charles F. Ellerman, in his treatise on "Sanitary Reform and Agricultural Improvement," urges two points on this subject:

“1. Any plan is unhealthy, uncleanly, and enormously wasteful, which consigns the excreta of the population to rivers or

water-courses.

"2. Any plan whereby the refuse of towns is employed to fertilize the country, is seriously defective, unless due provision is made that nuisance and injury to public health shall not arise; that substances pernicious to vegetation shall not be mixed with those which are beneficial to vegetation; that the smallest possible quantity of the latter shall be suffered to escape; and that it shall be saved in such a form as may admit of its being rendered available in any place, and in such a state of dilution or concentration as varying soils, seasons, or other circumstances, may require.

"Of the immense economic value of the preservation of human excreta, when we are sending whole fleets in search of those of birds, [guano,] which consist of precisely the same materials in a less advantageous form, no thoughtful man can entertain a reasonable doubt. Mr. Smith, a well-known agriculturist, 'rates the average annual value of the excreta of each individual at £1; so that, taking the whole population of Great Britain at twenty-eight millions, we are positively throwing away, every year, that which is equivalent to twenty-eight mil

1 Dempsey's Drainage and Sewage of Towns and Buildings, pp. 4, 5, and 20.

lions sterling! The actual saleable value in Belgium of the excreta is 37 shillings for each individual. There may be extravagance in this estimate; but, according to Dr. Playfair, a pound of urine is capable of increasing the production of grain by an equal weight; so that, even allowing for some exaggeration, the human urine at present wasted in this country would serve to produce more than all the grain required for the consumption of the entire population." 1

"It is a law of nature that the vegetable and animal kingdoms should be, as it were, supplementary the one to the other. Animals, by breathing air, load it with carbonic acid, and render it noxious to themselves; while vegetables absorb the acid gas, and give out oxygen in its stead, and thus supply the animal kingdom with vital air. Then again, whatever elements an animal takes from the soil as food, it returns again to the earth in a different form, noxious to itself, but nevertheless furnishing to the vegetable kingdom abundant and wholesome nourishment. It is thus that the organic elements complete their circuit in living beings. Nothing is lost, it is only reproduced in another form. These principles lie at the root of the whole science of agriculture, while they constitute the basis of all economical sanitary arrangements.

"The principle has been long admitted, and to a certain extent acted upon, that the refuse of a town, when applied to agricultural purposes, has some money value; but there seems, with few exceptions, to have been no approximation even to an adequate estimate of that value. It is stated in Dr. Playfair's report, made in 1844, that the amount obtained by the sale of the town manure of Manchester was £800 per annum ; and in Liverpool it produced £1,150; while at Rochdale it was only worth £18 10s. In some of the Scotch towns these things are managed better. The cost of cleansing Edinburgh is £12,000 pounds a year, and the manure, which is public property, as it ought to be in all towns,-sells for £10,000 per annum. At Perth and Aberdeen the manure pays the whole cost of cleansing, and returns, in addition, an annual revenue of £430 to the former town, and £600 to the latter.

'British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review, Vol. II, p. 237.

The whole of the rich and beautiful country extending from Gravelines to Ostend, originally consisted of a barren, sandy waste, which has, in the course of ages, been converted into a garden by the continued application of manure brought from a distance.

"The instances given above show, in all probability, the most that has been made of solid town manure. It is expensive to collect and remove, as well as to distribute over the land, and a good deal of the weight and bulk of it is unproductive; while in all towns where cesspools exist, the best part of the manure sinks into the subsoil or evaporates into the atmosphere, so as not only to be a loss to the public, but a serious cause of disease. Common sense, therefore, as well as economy, would point out the necessity of having a perfect system of sewers for every house, court, and street, so as to convey away all the manure in a liquid form, diluted with water. It should never be mixed with coal-ash and cinders, which ought to be removed separately. Now this liquid manure, sewer waTER, which is at present poured into our dock-basins, as a nuisance to be got rid of, might be made a source of great wealth to the town. If by any means it could be brought in contact with the barren soils in the neighborhood, it would cover them with the most luxuriant vegetation. Fortunately this is not a matter of mere speculation. It has been in operation for many years, and we are much mistaken if the practice does not become universal, so far, at least, as circumstances will permit. The sewer water of several of the towns in Devonshire is employed for the purposes of irrigation, particularly at Ashburton, where it has been so applied for above forty years. The meadows are deep drained, to prevent any stagnation, and the sewer water is thus allowed to pass off as soon as it has given its nutritious principles to the grass. Land which is not under this irrigation yields a coarse herbage, with rushes; but after the application of the liquid manure it grows the finer and more nutritious grasses in abundance, and there is a crop for ewes and lambs fully a month earlier than in other situations not

similarly circumstanced. The value of unimproved land is from 30s. to 40s. an acre, but after irrigation it is worth from

£8 to £12 per acre. We have here, at all events, a very strong proof of the value of the manure.

"The whole of the sewer water of Milan, a city containing 150,000 inhabitants, is distributed by channels over a large extent of meadow land, which it fertilizes to a prodigious degree. During the summer months the irrigation takes place for a few hours once a week, and during the winter it is nearly permanent. The meadows are mown in November, January, March, and April, for stable feeding; and in June, July, and August, they yield three crops of hay for winter; while in September they furnish abundant pasture for cattle till the beginning of the winter irrigation. These lands, after paying land-tax and all other expenses, yield a net annual rent of eight guineas an acre.

"The most remarkable example, however, of the value of this kind of irrigation is afforded by certain meadows in the neighborhood of Edinburgh. A portion of the sewer water of the Old Town is received into ponds, and allowed to deposit a considerable quantity of solid matter. From these ponds it is allowed to flow equally over plots of land, so as to cover them, and after passing through the soil it is carried off by thorough drainage. Three kinds of soil have been treated in this way: 1st, a strong loam on a clay subsoil; 2d, a lighter soil nearer the sea; and 3d, a pure sea sand, without any appreciable mixture of earthy matter, going down to high-water mark. About 300 acres have been irrigated at various times, some for upwards of 30 years. The productiveness of these meadows is extraordinary. In the year 1835, some of the richest land was let for £38 an acre; and in 1826, which was a scarce year, as much as £57 per acre was obtained for the same meadows. Mr. Smith, of Deanston, who is the highest authority on such subjects, concludes his report of this most satisfactory experiment as follows:

"The practical result of this application of sewer water is, that land, which let formerly at from 40s. to £6 per Scotch acre, is now let annually at from £30 to £40; and that poor, sandy land on the sea-shore, which might be worth 2s. 6d. per acre, lets at an annual rent of from £15 to £20, * * The average value of the land, irrespective of the sewer water ap

plication, may be taken at £3 per imperial acre, and the average rent of the irrigated land at £30, making a difference of £27; but £2 may be deducted as the cost of management, leaving £25 per acre of clear annual income due to the sewer water.'

XLI. WE RECOMMEND that measures be taken to prevent, as far as practicable, the smoke nuisance.

The smoke of furnaces, manufactories, and other establishments, is often a great nuisance to a neighborhood, and is supposed to be deleterious to health. It corrupts the air, and often renders it unfit for respiration; and all proper and practicable measures should be adopted to prevent the evils which result from it. Experiments have been made in the manufacturing towns in England, to construct furnaces and fireplaces so as to burn up the smoke, as fast as produced, and thus prevent its escaping, to become an inconvenience, nuisance, or injury to the inhabitants. These experiments have shown that the arrangement is an economical and practical as well as a sanitary improvement. Less fuel is required when the smoke is burned than when it is permitted to escape unburned. We desire to call the attention of all interested to the subject, as worthy of careful investigation. Several important facts and illustrations relating to this subject may be found in recent English sanitary publications.2

XLII. WE RECOMMEND that the sanitary effects of patent medicines and other nostrums, and secret remedies, be observed; that physicians in their prescriptions and names of medicines, and apothecaries in their compounds, use great caution and care; and that medical compounds advertised for sale be avoided, unless the material of which they are composed be known, or unless manufactured and sold by a person of known honesty and integrity.

I Liverpool Health of Towns Advocate, pp. 60-62.

"The smoke nuisance is, perhaps, one of the most gratuitous injuries inflicted on the public, for, in the first place, it is altogether unnecessary, and, secondly, it costs the perpetrators of it a good round sum every year to keep it going. The loss to the public, from excess of washing, &c., which a smoky atmosphere renders necessary, is more than at first sight might appear. Dr. Lyon Playfair has shown, that in this one item Manchester has been expending £60,000 a year, and that, if the expense of additional painting and whitewashing be added, the actual money loss would be double the amount of the poor rates every year. The Rev. Mr. Clay states, that in Preston only two furnaces consume their smoke, and even that imperfectly; but were all the factories in town to do as much, the public would save £10,450 a year in extra washing."-Liverpool Health of Towns Adv.