62 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



Campbell says it does at the Canal when the wind is in the same 

 direction. It is possible that water taken at a distance of two or 

 three miles to the northeast from the place from which No. 6 bottle 

 was filled, would have been purer. 



On making inquiries of one of the officials of the sewer depart- 

 ment of the city, I found it was impossible to get at the exact 

 number of families whose waterclosets connect with the sewers, but 

 was told that from twenty-five to thirty-three per cent of them do. 

 Now if ten thousand or thirteen thousand odd have rendered the 

 water of the bay so vile as we have found it, what will it be when 

 the whole forty thousand are compelled to connect their closets with 

 the sewers ? Kind friends have sent me books and pamphlets on 

 the disposition of sewage, — some evidently good, some which seem 

 to me to be utterly bad, and some that would, apparently, be per- 

 fectly effective. Mons. Berleix, of Paris, has invented a system 

 which he calls Pneumatic, which, so far as I can see from the 

 drawings and descriptions, is about perfect, but the expense would 

 be very great. Mr. Geo. E. Waring designed a system for the city 

 of Memphis, Tenn., which Mr. I. S. Gardner, of the New York 

 State Board of Health, pronounces to be the " best plan yet 

 devised." It is called the Separate Sewage System, and consists of 

 a set of pipes by which excreta, slops and waste water are removed, 

 while storm water is provided with separate conduits of large 

 dimensions, or led off on the surface to natural channels of outflow. 

 By many the plan called intercepting is advocated. Have the 

 advocates of this plan well considered the matter ? Certainly, by 

 the intercepting system there can be nothing removed from the 

 water but the solid portions, which, when deprived of the water 

 contained in them, would bear but a very small percentage of the 

 whole, while the percentage of the fluid portions would be very 

 great, and the saving of the solid portions only for manurial 

 purposes would be like saving the husk and discarding the kernel. 

 I quote from an article on " Sewage and Sewage Farming," in 

 Nature, which, I think, not only strengthens, but clinches the two 

 points which I am contending for, viz : ist, That water contaminated 

 with sewage is not easily oxidized ; and 2nd, That the intercepting 

 plan does not by any means deprive the hquid portions of their 

 manurial nor deleterious properties. The writer, Mr. Thos. 

 Baldwin, in speaking of the sewage of Northampton, Eng., says : 



