PROCEEDINGS OF THE COTTESWOLD CLUB 145 



only a portion of it ever reaches the Severn. In summer 

 time very httle water passes from the Stour at all. 



Worcester, population 42,900, about 14 miles below 

 Stourport by water. It, at present, passes its sewage 

 directly into the river, but a mandamus has lieen issued 

 which compels the Corporation to treat the sewage within 

 the next two years. Water supply wholly from the Severn, 

 the water being subjected to sand filtration. 



UpTON-ON-SeveRN, population 2,000 (about), 10 miles 

 below Worcester, drains some sewage into the river. 

 Privies are here in common use, and there is no public 

 water supply. 



Tewkesbury, population 5,269, 17 miles by river below 

 Worcester, turns sewage into the river. Has a public water 

 supply of filtered Severn water. 



The Canals opening into the Severn discharge 



an occasional lock-ful of their water into the river. 



There are a few outlying places such as OSWESTRY, 

 Ludlow and Tenbury, and soHtary houses and hamlets 

 on the Severn or its branches, which also add their pollu- 

 tion or such of it as can ever reach the river. 



The Self Purification of the River 



The total town population that drains its sewage, treated 

 and untreated, into the Severn and its branches above 

 Tewkesbury, is less than 150,000. So far as the sewage 

 goes it is nowhere sufficient in quantity to have any marked 

 effect upon the quaHty of the water in the river, and the 

 small effect it does produce is very transient. The fact 

 is, however, the volume of the water coming down the 

 Severn is too vast, in proportion to the actual solid 

 material of the sewage discharged into it, for the latter to 

 be appreciable. However unpleasant this list of pollutions 

 may sound to the ear, if we come to calculate the average 

 mass or weight of the solid polluting material of animal 



