186 Sewage and Sewerage. [ April, 
to give a full and true account of the points really at issue between 
Rothampstead and Munich. 
The “ earth-closet ” system, as advocated by the Rev. H. Moule, 
of Dorchester, is scientifically well-nigh as thoroughgoing as the 
system of purification by fire. It is even less amenable to objection 
on the score of offensiveness; but we fear that considerations of 
“expense, as well as the mechanical ones of difficult conveyance and 
transport, will restrict the sphere of its application to certain public 
institutions, and render its adoption impossible, at least to any great 
extent, in private dwelling-houses. 
The ordinary Englishman has an extraordinary horror of domi- 
ciliary visitations, and especially does he abhor them when they are 
of the kind which this system postulates. The economist knows 
that suspension in water is a cheaper, as the least economical of men 
knows it is a less offensive, mode of carriage than any modification 
or adaptation of the scavenger’s cart. And, finally, the agricultural 
chemist thinks, indeed, that earth is the true medium for the deodo- 
rization and the utilization of sewage, but he thinks also that the 
true way of acting upon this conviction is to bring the sewage to the 
soil in the irrigated meadow, not the soil to the sewage in the earth- 
closet. But we should not be doing justice to our convictions, if we 
did not recommend Mr. Moule’s pamphlet most strongly to the 
attention of our readers, and express our belief that this system, 
though not so universally applicable in this country as the system 
of removal by water, may yet—under certain circumstances, and 
especially under such conditions as attach to public institutions—be 
found of easy application and permanent usefulness.* 
Of the plan which would substitute ashes and ashpits for earth 
and earth-closets, we must speak in very different terms. The 
advocates of that system should assuredly be sent to Coventry to 
learn what its working really is. The mayor of that town we 
find giving evidence to the following effect before Dr. Brady’s 
Select Committee (see ‘Second Report,’ p.85, 4,497). Mr. F. Wiley: 
“Tn all new houses, we will not sanction a plan unless they build a 
water-closet, because we consider the wet ash-pits which are used so 
injurious to health. As a medical man, I really have seen so much 
evil from those nasty ash-pits ina yard half-full of sewage, that no 
poor people ought to be allowed to live near them.” 4498. Mr. 
Caird: “Not if they are nasty ?”—“ They are all nasty; not a 
private house can drain them, and the corporation will not allow 
you to drain an ash-pit into the sewers ; these ash-pits generate fevers 
in the neighbourhood; I believe the nasty ash-pits in towns are 
the greatest source of fever; they poison your water and they poison 
* ‘We cannot speak from personal knowledge, but we understand that Messrs, 
White & Co., of Bedford Street, Strand, London, have made arrangements for 
demonstrating the mode of operation of Mr. Moule’s invention in all its different 
forms. 
