132 MEMOIR OF ALFRED SMEE. [CHAP. XI. 



I have lingered long over this last and important work of 

 Alfred Smee, because it embraces his great system of Mental 

 Philosophy, which should be studied by every intelligent youth, 

 that he may conduct on a sure basis the discipline of his own 

 mind, and his relations with his fellow-men. Of all the 

 books Alfred Smee wrote this was unquestionably his favourite. 

 The frontispiece contains an admirable likeness of him drawn 

 by Mr. H. R Eobertson, which was most delicately and finely 

 engraved for this work by the celebrated engraver Mr. C. H. 

 Jeens. The picture was expressly taken for the above work, and 

 was the gift to my mother from one of the public companies to 

 which my father belonged, as a kind token of grateful recognition 

 for some great services he had done it. There are besides 

 fifty-eight woodcuts, and the book, like ' My Garden,' is beauti- 

 fully got up, and published by Messrs. Bell. 



In the summer of 1873 there was an outburst of typhoid fever 

 in the West-end of London, in the close vicinity of Cavendish 

 Square. The question was raised that this pestilence was caused 

 by the milk from cows fed upon sewage grass, and a controversy 

 ensued whether or no sewage grounds were hurtful to health. 

 For some years Alfred Smee had been investigating the question 

 of sewage ; and his son, Alfred Hutchison Smee, who kept a 

 small herd of cows at Wallington, had also been making various 

 experiments on the feeding of cows, the results of which the 

 latter gentleman has embodied in a valuable little treatise full of 

 important statistics, which is entitled ' Milk in Health and 

 Disease.' * No sooner did this controversy on sewage begin in 

 the daily papers than my father wrote his own experience. 

 The correspondence of Alfred Smee on ' Milk, Typhoid Fever, 

 and Sewage/ will be found in the Appendix, No. XXXYI.A., as 

 also the paper he read before the Health Section of the Social 

 Science Congress at Norwich, October 3rd, 1873, on < Sewage, 

 Sewage Produce, and Disease.' (See Appendix, No. XXXVI.B.) 

 Later, on December 3rd, 1875, Alfred Smee read a paper before 

 the Society of Arts, on ' Proposed Heads of Legislation for the 

 Kegulation of Sewage Grounds.' (See Appendix, No. XXXYI.c.) 

 The discussion on this paper was adjourned to January 19th, 

 1876. To this discussion Alfred Smee replied, and that evening 

 was the last time I heard my father speak before a public meet- 

 ing. Little did I think that evening that exactly in a year and 



* This little book is published by Messrs. Newman, Devonshire Street, 

 Bishopsgate Street. (1875.) 



