9(5 • REPORT— 1876. 



Tour Committee •would wish to call attention to the publication, since the 

 last Meeting, of the sixth and final Eeport of Her Majesty's Commissioners 

 appointed to inquire into the best means of preventing the pollution of rivers. 

 The volume treats of the Domestic Water Supply of Great Britain, and in 

 it the Commissioners state that the New lied Sandstone Rock constitutes one 

 of the most effective filtering media known ; and being at the same time a 

 powerful destroyer of organic matter, the evidence of previous pollutiou, in 

 water drawn from deep wells in this rock, may be safely ignored, " for being 

 a porous and ferruginous rock, it exerts a powerful oxidizing influence upon 

 the dissolved organic matter which percolates through it. To such an extent 

 is this oxidation carried, that in some cases, as in those of the deep-well 

 waters supplying St. Helen's and Tranmere, every trace of organic matter 

 is converted into innocuous mineral compounds." 



The Commissioners further add that, though the quartz sand constituting 

 the bulk of the New Red Sandstone is usually cemeuted together by carbonate 

 or sulphate of lime, the hardness of the water is generally modei'ate, and of 

 a nature that can be softened by lime, according to Dr. Clark's method, and 

 that the " unpolluted waters drawn from deep wells in the New Red Sandstone 

 are almost invariably clear, sparkling, and palatable, and are amongst the best 

 and most wholesome waters for domestic supply in Great Britain. They, con- 

 tain, as a rule, but a moderate amount of saline impurity, and either none or 

 but the merest traces of organic impurity. There is every reason to believe 

 that a vast quantity of hitherto unutilized water of most excellent quality 

 is to be had at moderate expense from this very extensive geological for- 

 mation." 



This area is certainly not less than ten thousand square miles in extent in 

 England and "Wales, with an average rainfall of 30 inches, of which certainly 

 never less than 10 inches per annum percolates into the gi'ouud, which would 

 give an absorption of water amounting to no loss than one hundi'ed and forty- 

 three millions three hundred and thirty-six thousand gallons per square mile 

 per annum, which, on an available area of ten thousand square miles, gives 

 an annual absorption of nearly a billion and a half of gallons in England and 

 Wales. 



How small a proportion tlie enormous quantities pumped at various stations 

 (as exemplified in this and the previous Report) bear to the available resources, 

 will be at once apparent. The abundant balance loft will, we trust, ere long 

 be made available for those towns and country populations in the Midland 

 Counties now suffering all the ills so prolifically springing from a polluted 

 water supply. 



Midland Counties. 



Name of Member of Committee asking for information. Rev. Henry W. 

 Crosskey. 



Name of Individual or Company applied to : — 



Waterworks, Coventry. 



1. One 196 ft. deep, one 75 ft. deep, and oue 800 feet from surface. 2. 256 

 ft. 3. 10 ft., 4 ft. diameter; 290 feet, from 2 ft. to 6 in. 4. 14 feet ; difference 

 12Lom-s. 5. 800,000. 6. Yes, diminished slightly. 7. Yes, in a few hom-s. 8. No. 

 9. Red Sandstone and clay. 13. No. 14. Not aware of any except at Leaming- 

 ton. 15. No. 



Birmlughani Corporation. 



1. Asion, juxia Birmingham. 2. 295 ft. 3. 120 ft., diameter 10 ft.; 407 ft., 

 18 in. bore-hole. 4. Overflows 10 ft. above siuface, 100 ft. ; pump night and day. 

 5. 3 million gallons. 6. Not observed to have altered. 7. Not observed. 



