1866. | Sewage and Sewerage. 197 
as to our need of “further researches from our chemists in this 
direction,’ we recommend him, en attendant, to expunge this 
sentence from the proofs of his second edition. Mr. Menzies’s 
remarks as to the impossibility of merely local authorities making 
eyen industries, such as those of the water-mill and the river-dock, 
reduced though they are to insignificance by the development of the 
steam-engine and the railway, subservient to the interests of an 
entire river valley and its inhabitants, deserve serious attention. A 
Metropolitan Board, charged with the supervision of our rivers, 
would raise the temperature and increase the comfort and salubrity 
of whole counties ; and to the establishment of some such agency, 
strong enough to tax equitably the claims for compensation which 
local interests will make, and to prevent provincial jobbery, we look 
forward with confident hope. 
Carbolic acid is, according to Mr. Menzies (p. 35), not so favour- 
able to vegetation as Mr. Macdougall has found it at Carlisle; and 
though he agrees with Professor Way* as to the fertilizing effects 
of the detritus of the streets upon sandy soils, we observe that his 
(possibly greater) knowledge of the character and composition of 
the Edmburgh paving furnishes him with a somewhat different 
explanation of its modus operandi there. It is assuredly a curious 
correlation—rather should we call it a providential arrangement— 
that where men congregate in great numbers, the refuse from their 
gas manufacture should furnish them with such a disinfectant as is 
carbolic acid; and that the very washings of the streets, worn into 
powder by passing and repassing wheels and feet, should render the 
barren sand capable of cultivation. 
Of the ultimate triumph of the sanitarian creed, we will say, in 
conclusion, we entertain not the slightest doubt. Unbelievers will 
be converted and nuisances reformed; our houses will be made 
wholesome, our streets inoffensive, and our rivers pure. The 
strength of those who work, whether by head or with hand, will be 
less encroached upon by debility and depression ; and the sum total 
of our years, and even of our happiness and enjoyment, will be 
increased perceptibly. Something, however, may be done to retard 
the consummation of the sanitarian victory, by the incautiousness 
of the sanitarians themselves. The best cause is injured by an over- 
statement, and the following assertion, at p. 179 of the evidence 
given before Lord Robert Montagu’s Committee, partakes some- 
what of the character of an over-statement. The witness whose 
evidence is there recorded, speaks to the following effect :—‘ My 
experience is, that if you compel the detention of the refuse of cess- 
pools in the vicinity of human dwellings until putrescence has set 
im, you as certainly manufacture fever as two and two make four.” 
Now, we do think it highly probable that accumulations of festering 
* Professor Way : Evidence Lord R. Montagu’s Committee, p. 214. 
