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posing of sewage made necessary by the introduction of 

 water into the cities and its free use by the people. 



Many costly systems of sewerage have been adopted 

 and proved complete failures or unsatisfactory. 



The discharging of sewage into rivers and harbors has 

 resulted in their pollution and becoming sources of sick- 

 ness and death. 



Clarification by precipitation is not purification, as six 

 sevenths of putrescible matter may remain after clarifica- 

 tion, as analysis proves. 



A commission appointed by Parliament, composed of 

 Messrs. Dennison, Frankland and Morton reported : — 

 "That the actual resources of chemistry do not permit the 

 hope that the polluting matter of sewage can be precipi- 

 tated and sent away b}^ the appliance of chemical reac- 

 tion, and unless new chemical laws are discovered it is 

 useless to attempt the employment of chemical agents. 

 Epuration must be confided to Dame Nature.'' 



I. Babut du Maris says . — "Millions of dollars have 

 been expended in France in chemical experiments on sew- 

 age, all of which have been condemned.'' 



Thirty years ago in an address before this society Hon. 

 Darwin E. Ware said: — "The subject of sewerage has 

 vital relations to progress of civilization. Through the 

 sewers of cities discharging into the ocean, the highest 

 properties of the soil are irrecoverably lost. The turbid cur- 

 rents of the North River, the Thames and the Seine are 

 richer than Pactolus with its sands of gold. For that 

 which is pollution to their waters, is the touch of magic to 

 the fields and the power of food for successive generations 

 of men. The invention of a plan by which the slime and 

 sediment of cities can be transformed into corn and wheat 

 gives scope for one of the most beneficial systems of econ- 

 omy yet devised." 



Liebig said of the cloaca of Rome discharging into the 

 Tiber : — "That it swallowed up in a few hundred years all 



