292 American Fisheries Society 



deal of organic matter. This kind of waste must not ibe put into the 

 streams; it can be disposed of in other ways. They can use it for hog 

 feed or bury it, or spread it on land, but the stream is not the place for 

 it. Then, there is the wash water, used in the washing of cans and other 

 kinds of apparatus. There is a large volume of this water; you cannot 

 bury or feed it to hogs, and the only thing to do with it is to allow it 

 to go back into the stream. However, this kind of waste is not so hard 

 to treat. We are working on methods of treating it, and the results of 

 our investigations will be available very soon. 



Dr. R. C. Osburn, Columbus, Ohio: Of course, it is possible to 

 neutralize any kind of pollution by some chemical method. It may be 

 very expensive; in some cases it undoubtedly will be. But the main 

 point, as it appears to me, in what Mr. Travers presented this afternoon 

 is that he has found a method, very much cheaper than anything hereto- 

 fore produced, for getting rid of a number of our greatest sources of 

 pollution, rendering the water pure so far as fish are concerned — pure, 

 because fish will live in it, as has been demonstrated by actual test. 

 Another point is that there is absolutely no danger in the use of the 

 material which Mr. Travers has discovered; you could put any quantity 

 of it into the streams and no damage whatever would result to the 

 fish; it is absolutely harmless in itself. 



Mr. Travers : Do not get this treatment confused with the question 

 of treating domestic sewage. In our experiments we have not con- 

 sidered what is known as ordinary domestic sewage as being detri- 

 mental to fish life, because it will purify itself after it flows a few miles. 

 If we were figuring on treating domestic sewage, it would involve the 

 question of treating a very large volume of water ; but we do not do 

 that. The pollutions of which I have been speaking are concentrated 

 pollutions issuing from factories, the volume of which is not great, and 

 the treatment of which, before it goes out, will do away with the 

 possibility of the pollution of large bodies of water. This treatment is 

 distinctly intended for industrial wastes, not domestic sewage. 



