No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 209 



mates of the house were directly lespousible and which might have 

 beeu avoided by the outlay of very little money. 



For the sake of convenience the well is located near the house, 

 cftentimes under tiie same roof. At no great distance is the privy 

 vault, or in case the house is supplied with a water closet in doors 

 the cesspool may be found within 30 or 40 feet from the well. The 

 waste water from the house is either thrown directly upon the ground 

 1q the neighborhood of the kitchen or at the most carried but a short 

 distance away by pipes and then left to find, own channels. 



In case one well is used for both house and barn it is frequently 

 located somewhere between the two buildings. If it escapes pollu- 

 tion from the sources just mentioned it is in daiiger of contamination 

 from the barnyard. There seems tO' be an impression more or less 

 general that if the jnivy vault is 30 feet or more from the well there 

 is no danger of contaminating the water, ]iarticularly if the surface 

 of the earth slopes from the well toward the cesspool. To illustrate 

 the fallacy of such an opinion, I will select two cases from the analy- 

 sis given in the table, v^ample No. 18 was taken from a well in the 

 country. The only apparent source of contamination within a 

 quarter of a mile or more was a privy vault between 50 and 60 feet 

 from the well. The results of the examination of this sample indi- 

 cate an exceedingly loud condition and points directly to contamina- 

 tion with matter of animal origin. There is no doubt whatever that 

 the privy vault just mentioned was the source from which this water 

 received its pollution. 



In this connection, sample No. 15 shows results that are still more 

 instructive. The well from which this sample was taken is located 

 on a farm property about eight miles froiu West Chester. The owner 

 of this well had at various times dumped a quantity of sulphate of 

 zinc in a depression in the earth between one and two hundred feet 

 from the well. The water was found to contain 1-10 of one per cent. 

 (1,000 parts per million) of zinc sulphate, an amount sufficient to 

 render the water unfit for domestic use. 



The pollution of the water supply is doubtlessly the most serious 

 sanitary evil in connection with country homes and it is an evil 

 which has existed throughout all past time. The existence of such 

 an evil as this is in some cases probably the result of ignorance, in 

 other of indifference or perhaps a combination of both. Often- 

 times it is difficult matter to convince a man that a well that has 

 been used by himself during his entire lifetime and perhaps his an- 

 cestors before him, is supplying a water unfit for household use. He 

 will point to the fact of its long continued use as evidence of whole- 

 some character of the water, and as additional evidence that there 

 can be no pollution from cesspools or barnyards, he will call attention 



14— G— 1902 



