196 Sewage and Sewerage. | April, 
proper annual quantity for properly selected grass land) guarantee 
the value of the bulk of this octavo, which treats of matters more 
purely agricultural and economical. It should be added, that no 
one can be held to have thoroughly mastered this subject who 
has not read the two Reports preceding the one which we have 
just noticed, as well as the two others, drawn up by Dr. Brady’s 
Committee, which preceded the one to which we are now about to 
draw the attention of our readers. 
This last and largest of our Blue Books, the ‘ Report, with 
Appendices, of Lord Robert Montagu’s Committee,’ is a vast volume, 
such as might have been presented to both Houses of the Brobdig- 
nagian Parliament by the order of the king of that realm. Partly 
owing to the demand which existed for this Report, and partly, we 
imagine, owing to the wise regulations for the “ happy despatch” of 
Blue Books, to which we have already alluded m a note, this 
gigantic Blue Book is not, we apprehend, procurable by ordinary 
mortals. The Report (under which word we have elsewhere in 
this article, for brevity’s sake, included Report and Appendices) 
itself is but short; and its salient points are easily reproducible, 
but that the evidence given, and the applications and tenders made, 
to the Commissioners and the Board of Works, in every style and 
by men of every class—from men decorated with the Victoria Cross 
down to men who accuse their rivals of being “ Irish solicitors, 
struck off the rolls ‘ for a cause,’ ”’—should be lost to the world, is a 
thing to be regretted on every ground, scientific, literary, and social. 
Mr. Menzies’s book possesses great claims, both extrinsic and 
intrinsic. It is printed and got up in a style de luxe; and the 
matter which it contains is so clearly and pleasantly put forth, that 
the mind has as little difficulty in apprehending the writer's meaning, 
as the eye has in running along his liberally-interspaced, lberally- 
margined lines. Mr. Menzies’s views are generally, as it seems to us, 
sound, and in keeping with those entertained by the majority of the 
engineering profession ; and we do not know that, for the begmner, a 
better introduction to the subject can be found than that which this 
book affords. It is right, however, to add that his views, very 
fully expounded in his work, as to having separate systems of 
sewers for the rainfall and for the sewage severally, are in direct 
opposition to the dicta of Mr. Austin, put out in 1857, as well as to 
those of Mr. Bazalgette, put out in 1866. Though we are by 
no means disposed to consider the alliterative dictum, “the rainfall 
to the river, the sewage to the soil,” as an axiomatic truth, we may 
erant, towards the end of an article, that the question does admit of 
two opinions being held about it. Of this, however, Mr. Menzies’s 
suggestion as to “destroyg ammonia and other salts” of sewage 
“entirely,” “by passing the whole through filters of magnetie 
carbide of won,” does not admit; and agreeing with Mr. Menzies 
