206 THE HOUSE ELY—DISEASE CARRIER 
dom through seventy-two inches of sterilized sand, 
truly an heroic struggle! 
Dry earth, therefore, is not satisfactory, although in 
earth closets provided with buckets removed daily the 
problem resolves itself into the cjuestion of the proper 
disposal of the contents of the buckets. 
In many localities lime is used instead of dry earth. 
A careful study of the lime system was made by Stiles 
and Gardner in a certain industrial village of the South. 
In that village the habit was to clean the outhouses 
once a week and to distribute the lime free to the fam¬ 
ilies. The people were notified repeatedly that the lime 
should be used regularly and generously, and the au¬ 
thorities of the village assured the observers that all 
reasonable efforts were made to carry out the system 
properly. It therefore seemed to the Government men 
that this particular village was a very fair case to take 
as a basis for observations as to the actual workings of 
the system. Their observations were careful, and they 
found that in thirty-two instances out of eighty-eight 
the lime had actually been used, and the conclusion was 
that, even where lime is furnished free of cost and the 
people are urged to use it, it is not generally adopted. 
Moreover, of the thirty-two outhouses in which it had 
been used, it was freely used in only three cases. 
The conclusion was that families cannot be relied 
upon to use it properly. In not one instance of the 
eighty-eight did they fail to find exposed night-soil of 
easy access to flies and other insects. Live fly larvae 
were found in all samples taken. It may be mentioned 
