No. XXXVI.C.] APPENDIX. 407 



beautiful park of Beddington for fifty or sixty yards from the neighbouring 

 sewage -ground. 



The general conduct of the sewage-ground from the commencement of 

 the process to its termination requires the most careful supervision. The 

 great artery passing from the town is usually covered up within their own 

 district, but the moment it passes from their district it is no more an 

 object of solicitude to the ratepayers of the town, but is frequently left 

 open to pollute the air of the neighbouring villages. 



Sanitary science enjoins the most vigilant care of sewers in the district, 

 but the moment the district is crossed, sanitary science is disregarded as 

 though it were unimportant. 



What the Boards of Health of towns do not do with a good grace they 

 should be compelled to do under fine, and it would not be unreasonable to 

 subject them to a fine of 25 a day if they permit their main or sewage 

 arteries to be exposed within 100 yards of a highway or of any private 

 property. At the present time it not unfrequently happens that no pre- 

 caution is taken against the sewage, whether not defecated or defecated, 

 from passing on to vegetables used for food in a raw state. For instance, 

 at the fever-stricken town of Croydon, there are no special precautions 

 taken to avoid the excreta of a typhoid case from passing to watercresses, 

 and hence faecal matter may be served back to themselves, or on the tables 

 of the unsuspecting aristocracy of London, within forty-eight hours from 

 its passage from a patient about to die of the disease. 



Watercresses act as a scrubbing-brush to the sewage, and remove all 

 the solid flocculi from the water which adhere to the stalks. 



Typhoid faecal matter is absolutely poisonous in the sanitary district, 

 but how many persons take it into the stomach after it has passed their 

 own immediate district the so-called sanitary authorities appear to be 

 perfectly indifferent. 



To ' prevent this horrible, disgusting, and dangerous outrage on the 

 community, a penalty of at least 100 a day should be inflicted on any 

 person growing, or permitting to be grown, salad of any kind upon a 

 sewage-ground, and the public ought to be further protected against the 

 cupidity of Boards of Health who would imperil the lives of communities 

 for a small extra gain, by imposing a penalty of 5 on any person know- 

 ingly selling salads from sewage-grounds, and this penalty should be 

 imposed for every offence committed. There is no reason whatever why 

 unsuspecting persons should be exposed to this loathsome and dangerous 

 risk, and the fullest protection ought to be offered to the public against it. 

 Salad may be defined, for the purpose of such protection, to be any plant 

 ordinarily used by man in an uncooked state. 



As it may be regarded as an undoubted fact that vegetables take up 

 foul sewage matters, and it requires considerable time before they are 

 changed in the tissues of the plant, no vegetable ought to be used for 

 human food, even in the cooked state, until suitable time is allowed for 

 the assimilation and changing of the sewage matter in the substance of 

 the plant. The time would necessarily vary with the time of year, the 

 temperature, the active state of the plant, the amount of light, and various 

 other conditions, but probably an interval of two months would afford a 

 reasonable protection after defecated sewage had been applied to the 

 growing plant. The penalty for infraction of the law might be fixed at 



