624 -^ Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



a heavy loss into a handsome profit. (5.) That by it the 

 farmer is rendered entirely independent of drought ; so that 

 he can be practically certain of his crops, and, moreover, be 

 able to transplant them as much as he pleases. (6.) That 

 when circumstances are favourable it has been found lo pay, 

 and when its management is more thoroughly understood it 

 will doubtless in many instances be found to be a source of 

 income to the towns. Where the circumstances are not so 

 favourable it will yet prove to be the most satisfactory way to 

 get rid of the nuisance, although it may not entirely pay its 

 expenses." 



Nothing is more thoroughly established in regard to this 

 subject than the entire absence of anything like nuisance, or 

 injury to the health of those on or in the immediate vicinity 

 of sewage farms. The only semblance of nuisance that ever 

 exists on a well-managed farm is at the outfall, and this is re- 

 duced to a minimum by prompt and effective treatment, and, 

 at worst, the odour is no more offensive than that noticeable 

 in the vicinity of any of our present sewer outfalls into the 

 harbour. The bounteous production of ozone by the luxuriant 

 vegetation of the farm corrects any tendency to the rise of 

 miasmata from the soil, and actually purifies the air to a 

 degree beyond that of the towns themselves. Dr. Cresswell 

 says of the Norwood farm at Croydon : "As for efiluvia, I will 

 not say there does not exist any, but it is so seldom perceptible 

 that a house built within 200 or 300 yards would command 

 the same rent as if half a mile off." Dr. Carpenter says that 

 hundreds of persons exercise and recreate in the sew^age farms 

 of the Croydon Local Board of Health, and that visitors ex- 

 press surprise at the absence of everything offensive to sight 

 and smell. The travelling correspondent to the Melbourne 

 Age, in describing the sewage farms at Croydon, says, " It is 

 only fair to admit that the health of the people who live upon 

 the farm (seventy-two in number) is very good, and the only 

 place where any unpleasant odour is traceable is at the sieves 

 where the solid matter is arrested, an operation which takes 

 place some distance away, and at the spot where the crude 

 sewage is distributed over the first field." Mr. Stayton, in his 

 report to the New South Wales Government, says of the 

 Berlin Sewage Farm, " The health of the labourers on the 

 farms is very good, and the death-rate was only 11 per 1,000 

 during the last year ; and it is rather a remarkable fact that, 

 although there was a severe epidemic of typhoid during the 

 first months of 1888 in this city, yet no case of disease occurred 

 on any of the farms." 



Evidence is abundant and emphatic in declaring that the 

 purest and healthiest mode of sewage disposal is by broad 

 irrigation, and this method can be adopted in the immediate 



