276 PETER SPENCE 



lofty stacks, and diffused before they could 

 alight among human habitations. 



The nitrogen, phosphates, and alkalies in 

 sewage he would also utilise ; he regarded 

 the system of town drainage into watercourses 

 as wasteful and injurious in the extreme. In 

 fact, he would have all house flues connected 

 with drains ; the drains should be smoke 

 culverts as well as water conduits ; the gases 

 resulting from combustion would act destruc- 

 tively on the sewage gases, and both should 

 be carried away by means of very strong 

 draft up very lofty chimneys ; his idea was 

 600 feet high, at least. 



The vision his project presented to his 

 mind, he thus described: " The removal from 

 the interior of all our dwellings, from the 

 mansion to the cottage, and even to the 

 cellars, of the slightest trace of those 

 pestiferous emanations which feed our fevers, 

 consumption, and cholera, and which, more 

 than any other physical cause, serve to lower 

 the vital energies of our town population, 

 making them an easy prey to every epidemic. 



" Instead of the atmosphere of our towns 

 being as now, a dim, and dull, and murky 

 compound of black and yellow and grey 

 smoke, blended into a haze, and containing 



