348 Anulyahof Scieitlijic Books. 



and under churches, and the " horrid stinks" of our markets; 

 the former, as our author justly observes, independent of the 

 disgusting spectacle of skulls and skeletons which they con- 

 tinually exhibit to the passenger's notice, must tend to contami- 

 nate the air ; and not the air only, but the water also, for there 

 is a strange custom of tacking a pump to our ehurch-yard walls, 

 the well of which is generally surmounted by heaps of corpses 

 in various states of putrefaction and decay, piled up and kept 

 together by a kind of terrace-wall, which the enormous accumu- 

 lation of human remains renders a necessary appendage to most 

 of these teeming receptacles of mortality. In respect to our 

 markets, Evelyn's complaints also hold good ; the filth of our 

 slaughter-houses and the abominations of Covent-garden, our 

 marche aux fieurs, are familiar to every one ; but these are 

 matters not now immediately before us, however deserving of 

 that aid which the resources of science have elsewhere lent 

 them ; the cemeteries and markets of Paris might especially be 

 resorted to as containing the elements of admirable arrange- 

 ments. 



There is another growing nuisance, to which the following pas- 

 sage from the Fumifugium is not inappropriately applicable : 

 we mean the ga&-works, which have already destroyed the smelts 

 and flounders in the immediate vicinity of London, while the 

 Brentford establishment threatens a similar annihilation of the 

 finny tribes of Isleworth and Richmond, and even promises to 

 interfere with the honest angler's sport as high up the river as 

 Ham and Twickenham : " If," says Evelyn, " we may not hope 

 for so absolute a cure of all that is offensive, at least let such 

 whose works are on the margent of the Thames, and which are, 

 indeed, the most intolerable, be banished furtlier off, and not 

 once dare to approach that silver channel, which glides by her 

 stately palaces, and irrigates her welcome banks." 



But it is now time to acquaint our readers with the recent 

 plans and proposals for the destruction of smoke, premising, 

 however, that there is nothing new ii> them, for they have been 

 canvassed and considered with various^ ability and success, by 

 almost all our first-rate engineers, at the head of whom we place 

 the late celebrated Mr. Watt, who long ago turned his mind to this 

 subject, and in our opinion, achieved much that has erroneously 

 been given to his contemporaries and successors ; indeed, the 

 great engines at the Soho manufactory, have all along been 

 worked without smoke, and we are a little surprised that in the 

 Report, now lying before us, from th« committee appointed by 

 the House of Commons, *' To inquire how far it may be practica- 

 ble to compel persons using steam-engines and furnaces in their 

 different works, to erect them in a manner less prejudicial to 

 public health and public comfort," and upon which report the 

 bill of last session was founded, that no notice is taken of Mr, 



