370 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



which force their way upwards through the drains to the 

 higher levels of the city. As the reclaimed laud becomes more 

 densely populated this evil will be more severely felt, and 

 will most assuredly mark its effect upon the death-rate. 



Many hold the opinion that the sewage of 30,000 inhabi- 

 tants, if allowed to flow into a body of water the size of 

 Wellington Harbour, becomes lost in its immensity, and that 

 no evil result is likely to accrue. When it is considered that 

 the flow of noxious matter is going on continuously at an 

 ever-increasing rate, and that a great portion is deposited upon 

 the bottom of the harbour in front of the city, it will be seen 

 that it can only be a matter of a few years till, with these 

 constantly recurring effects, our beautiful harbour, the chief 

 pride of the citizens, will become a source of annoyance and 

 disgust, instead of a pleasure and delight. 



It has been asserted that sea-water rapidly becomes fouled 

 by such discharge into it, especially where nearly landlocked, 

 and consequently not swept by strong currents. As the popu- 

 lation increases and other drainage arrangements are carried 

 out, the difficulty of introducing an entirely new system, how- 

 ever meritorious and advantageous, becomes more and more 

 felt, and preseiits a problem to be solved which, owing to the 

 difficulty attending a satisfactory solution, is naturally shirked 

 by those directing municipal affairs. In older countries, where 

 towns have for many years been sewered upon some system 

 or other (in many cases very unscientific ones), this difficulty 

 has been much felt ; notwithstanding which it has had to be 

 faced, consequently the sanitary condition of many towns 

 has been greatly improved. In England, the Eivers Pollution 

 Act has obliged action to be taken in the case of inland 

 towns. 



Baldwin Latham, a recognised authority upon sanitary 

 engineering, in his work upon the subject, remarks that 

 "the good that has arisen from the prosecution of sanitary 

 works wherever properly carried out may be taken as the 

 harbinger of better times, when the benefit of sanitary mea- 

 sures will be better understood and more extensively adopted." 

 Dr. Lyon Playfair, in his addi-ess at the Social Science Congress 

 at Glasgow in 1874, gives an example of the gradual improve- 

 ment in the health of London from the adoption of sanitary 

 measures, when the death-rate fell from 80 per 1,000 during 

 the period 1660-79 to 22-6 per 1,000 in 1871. How much 

 society loses annually from preventible diseases it is impossible 

 to fully estimate, as health is so intimately connected with all 

 the branches of every-day life. If upon no other than 

 economic grounds, it is true economy to spend some little of 

 our earnings in the prosecution of sanitary works." 



I will not weary you by repeating the thousand arguments 



