r 



IN INDIAN GAOLS. 935 



Madras in June 1869, and which, as the 'Report of Sanitary 

 Improvements in India' (so often quoted) very mildly puts it 

 (p. 132), 'threw the weight of their experience into the scale of 

 sewerage by water-carriage.' This memorandum should, I think, 

 he made more accessible in England than it is at present. We 

 have as much need of its plainly given common-sense instructions 

 as the people in Madras ; and we have, I apprehend, in our capaci- 

 ties of ratepayers and taxpayers, an equal claim to have them made 

 available for the use of Local Boards and other Sewer authorities. 

 The Army Sanitary Commissioners, I am glad to observe, have 

 nothing to retract of their opinions as to the dry-earth system ; and 

 in their answers to Dr. Cunningham's request for instructions in 

 his capacity of Sanitary Commissioner with the Government of 

 India, given in the Report just quoted, at p. 306, and of date 

 July 8, 1870, they refer the Commissioner to the memorandum of 

 March 8, 1869, and add to it the following words : — 



* It follows that to trust to dry-earth conservancy for improving the health of towns, 

 while ordinary station or town drainage is permitted to soak away in cesspits or on 

 the surface, is simply to poison the subsoil with sewer water, which, if collected and 

 conveyed in drain-pipes, would become a valuable manure. The question may now be 

 considered as settled by scientific investigation, that the sewage of inhabited buildings 

 should be treated as a single element, whether as regards health or agriculture ; and 

 also that to divide this sewage into two parts, and to remove the parts separately, is, 

 as we have stated elsewhere, to pay double where one payment would answer every 

 purpose.' 



The same Sanitary Commission is reported, in the same volume 

 (p. 38), as having decided that the dry-earth system could not 

 be generally introduced into a large city like Bombay ; and (at 

 p. 13) as declaring it unnecessary to discuss a certain scheme for 

 the removal of the sewage of Calcutta, which the Justices of the 

 Peace for that city — with whose names and numbers I am un- 

 acquainted — had previously rejected, for this reason amongst others, 

 namely, that it was ' simply a system of dry-earth conservancy.' 



Secondly: The Rivers Pollution Commissioners, appointed in 

 1868— namely, Sir William Denison, Dr. Frankland, and John 

 Chalmers Morton,— ought to have their opinion at least referred to. 

 In their report, published this year, they say (p. 50): 'We can 

 have no hesitation in pronouncing the dry-earth system, however 

 suitable for institutions, villages, and camps, where personal or 

 official regulations can be enforced, entirely unfitted to the cir- 

 cumstances of large towns.' 



