CHAPTER VI. 



THE WATEB SUPPLY. 

 Cottages Farm Houses Homesteads Field Ponds. 



COUNTKY places are generally worse off than towns 

 for a supply of good water. The Rivers Pollution Com- 

 missioners illustrated this in one of their reports by the 

 description, often true, of the way in which detached 

 cottages are supplied. The house is built on 20 perches of 

 land, and two holes are dug not 5 yards apart ; into one all 

 the filthy waste of every kind is discharged, and out of the 

 other the daily provision of water is obtained ! Farm-houses 

 also often suffer from unwholesome water. A well is dug, 

 perhaps 20 feet deep, in the backyard close to the cattle 

 courts. By-and-by the well-digger comes upon what he 

 calls a beautiful spring, which only means that he has got 

 below the level at which water stands in the adjoining rock. 

 That water was originally rain, and it has trickled down- 

 wards through the dung court close by, getting filtered and 

 oxidised no doubt in its passage, so that as drawn it is clear, 

 and probably all the sharper and pleasanter for the oxidised 

 animal matter which it contains ; but it is certainly liable 

 to pollution of a very offensive kind. There are instances 

 where the slops from the sick chamber thrown out thus 

 obtained entrance to such a well ; the water of which has been 

 used to cleanse the milk cans ; and the poison conveyed in 

 this way has been disseminated in the neighbouring town. 



