No. 4.] CATTLE COMMISSIONERS' REPORT. 587 



measure dependent on the health of the farming community. 

 There is scarely a city child who is not, in a degree, dependent for 

 its health on the sanitary conditions prevailing in the house of the 

 dairyman. Milk has been repeatedly shown to be the means of 

 distributing typhoid fever and other diseases. Any vegetable 

 foods from the farm, eaten raw, are liable to become carriers of 

 infectiou under unsanitary conditions. 



In mauy parts of our country other causes operate in making 

 the health of many people depend on the proprieties of country 

 homes. The thousands of city people who flock every summer to 

 the country, and bring to the farming community considerable 

 sums of money, should be properly protected against the dangers 

 of polluted water and infected milk by the adoption of suitable 

 methods of sewage disposal. Too frequently those who left the 

 city for the purpose of gaining strength by breathing pure air, 

 drinking pure water and eating pure food, only return with the 

 germs of an often fatal disease within them, to swell the typhoid 

 statistics of our large cities. 



The next subject to claim our attention is the protection of the 

 sources of drinking water. In the country water, as a rule, is 

 obtained from wells and springs. The important bearing upon 

 well water of soil purity demands a few explanatory remarks con- 

 cerning the origin of well water. Wells are excavations made 

 into the ground to a variable depth uutil water is reached. This 

 water is denominated gi'ound and subsoil water. Its origin may 

 be better understood if for the moment we conceive the surface of 

 the earth as more or less irregular, and entirely impervious to 

 water. The rain would collect on this surface and form lakes, 

 ponds and streams, according to the configuration of the surface. 

 If, now, we conceive this surface covered with sand or other 

 porous earth, to a greater or lesser height, and the top of this be 

 considered the earth's surface, the water will remain in the same 

 position, but it will be buried within, and fill the pores of the over- 

 lying soil, as subterranean lakes, ponds and streams. In digging 

 a well we remove the porous layer of earth until we reach these 

 subterranean streams or reservoirs of ground water. If the above 

 description be thoroughly understood, the condition under which 

 well water may be obtained at different depths will become intelli- 

 gible, and it will also appear plain why ground water may flow at 

 any surface stream and pick up on its way various substances 

 which have percolated the ground. 



AVells are exposed to contamination in two ways. The surface 

 water from rain, house slops and barn-yard drainage may find its 



