DRINKING-WATER FROM AGRICULTURAL LANDS. 51 



talit}', either in plants or animals. These putrefactive processes either 

 give rise to the formation of poisonous bodies, or they act simply as 

 ferments, generating similar processes of decomposition in the sub- 

 stances composing the animal organism." 



The " controlling vitality " of plants and man have widely differing 

 requirements : what is food to one is to the other poison, and sewage- 

 polluted water is just what the Brighton gardener uses. 



Dr. Corfield says, in a lecture before the Royal School of Military 

 Engineering at Chatham, that "... mere passage over the soil will 

 not purify sewage satisfactorily. The effluent water which goes off the 

 land is, to all intents and purposes, sewage.'''' And Mr. Denton, a dis- 

 tinguished engineer and scientist, says, in a lecture before the same 

 school, that "... water collected from the surface of cultivated lands, 

 and from the under-drains of cultivated lands, is always more or less 

 polluted with the organic matter of manure, even after subsidence in 

 lakes or reservoirs.''"' Shallow-well water is declared by the Rivers Pol- 

 lution Commissioners to be the most dangerous of all waters, " when- 

 ever the wells are situated, as is usually the case, near privies, drains, 

 and cesspools ; " and it is this shallow-well water that Denton refers to 

 when he goes on to say the commissioners declare that " such polluted 

 surface or drainage water (referred to above) is not of good quality for 

 domestic purposes, but it may be vised with less risk to health than 

 polluted shallow-well water, if human excrementitious matters do not 

 form part of the manure applied to the land." Mark this, on the 

 highest authority, that shallow-well water, the most dangerous stored 

 well-water known, is safer to drink than the effluent water from such 

 slopes as this article describes. When it is added that the Royal Com- 

 missioners, having examined the waters of some four hundred and twelve 

 shallow wells in different geological formations, pronounce them all, 

 with few exceptions, " entirely unfit for human consumption," the force 

 of the objections raised against the water from the foul slopes may be 

 appreciated. 



It may be suggested that filtering be resorted to, or the sewage 

 " disinfected," as some are pleased to call certain processes. But the 

 English commissioners say that " as applied to sewage, disinfectants 

 do not disinfect, and filter-beds do not filter. Both attempts have been 

 costly failures." And again they say, " No process has yet been de- 

 vised of cleansing surface-water once contaminated with sewage, so as 

 to make it safe for drinking." To this the late Mr. Kirkwood, the dis- 

 tinguished American engineer, adds, " . . .If this view of the case may 

 seem to be over-cautious, it is to be remembered that the poison, how- 

 ever trifling, is taken daily, and that, although when in robust health 

 the individual will not suffer from it, it may be sufficient to make itself 

 felt when he is prostrated by sickness, and his powers of resistance to 

 such influences are then proportionally impaired." 



It has been supposed that if the sewage be applied to these slopes 



