274 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



people were dying by hundreds of the cholera ; I passed 

 through and all around them and never had a chill. I have 

 traveled in thirty-four States of the Union and voted in four, 

 and came back to Connecticut to catch the ague and be made 

 a freeman. That all this sickness and all this malaria results 

 from the impurity of streams that are polluted by the filth 

 from cities or villages I do not believe. I think that the 

 defective plumbing in our cities and towns, upon which so 

 much money is spent, is the cause of as much disease as 

 anything else. I have had a little experience in this matter. 

 I have within a mile of me forty acres of ground which is a 

 swamp, and as filthy and foul as any man in Connecticut can 

 find, and on that forty acres the water is at nearly all seasons 

 of the year' from six inches to four feet deep, and filled with 

 vegetation growing up and decaying. We have six or seven 

 ponds on the hills surrounding ; I do not know the amount 

 of ground flowed, but there is a very large amount which 

 in the woods, and all flowing over this swamp from the sur- 

 face and the little streams and the falling rains. Waterbury 

 has the same thing, and all these villages down here have the 

 same kind of ponds and reservoirs filled with surface water, 

 and that water is brought to the villages for (Jrinking pur- 

 poses. Have the exhalations from such places nothing to do 

 with malaria? Years ago we tried to get the New Haven 

 water company to do something. I was appointed on a com- 

 mittee by the people of the town of Hamden to appear before 

 the legislature and get them to compel that company to keep 

 that pond up to a certain stage of water, and not to drain it 

 down more than two feet. When they drained it down, it 

 would smell badly enough to kill a hog. They finally agreed 

 that they would do it. But when it comes to a remedy, it is 

 pretty difficult to find it. As I was going to find some 

 experts to examine the gromid and to give an opinion in 

 regard to it, I met a member of the legislature, an old 

 acquaintance of mine from Litchfield County, who was a 

 representative. I stated the circumstances, and asked him if 

 he would not do something for us. He asked me, " Is there 



