64 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



that of tHe river." Here we have the idea carried out on land that 

 I spoke of in the tumbhng about of the water — the oxidizing of the 

 organic compounds of the sewage. The writer goes on to speak of 

 the crops which are grown, and says : " The land is not farmed in 

 what could be called a skilful manner, indeed the engineer frankly 

 said that up to the present, farming had been a secondary object 

 with the commissioners." He then devotes a few sentences to a 

 description of the land and the cost, etc., and concludes his remarks 

 as follows : "It will be understood at once that the inhabitants of 

 Northampton have been rid of the abominable stench which the 

 sewage formerly inflicted on them. But there remains for consider- 

 ation two points of very great importance to the people who live 

 along the river below the sewage farms. In the first place, if the 

 sewage be not deprived of its organic impurities on the farm, it 

 must, on mixing again with the river, cause a fresh nuisance. That 

 the people do think so is evidenced in a newspaper report which 

 lies before me, and, judging from what I saw of the effluent water, I 

 can sympathize with these people. I took a small bottle of water, 

 which I found contained a large quantity of organic matter. As it 

 went on the osier bed, it was still sewage most unmistakably, and 

 when the pores of this bed— this so-called filter bed — become full of 

 organic impurities, as they soon must, the complaints will become 

 louder and louder, and justly so. I have a second objection to the 

 arrangements here adopted, and it is this : What guarantee is there 

 that the contagium of any infectious disease which may be in the 

 sewage is destroyed. That some of it would be oxidized or destroyed 

 in flowing over the ground is certain, but the necessities of the case 

 require that the whole of it should be destroyed. I have made 

 experiments which prove conclusively that the contagium of 

 infectious cattle diseases is not destroyed in flowing over land, nor in 

 passing through such a filter as here provided, and as there is no 

 evidence to show that the contagious principle of human infectious 

 diseases is not equally active, it cannot be said that the commissioners 

 of Northampton have satisfactorily disposed of the sewage of that 



town." 



From what has been said, I think it may safely be concluded 



that the water in the bay is in a very bad condition ; that when the 



waterclosets of the city shall have been connected with the sewers, 



the water will be in a much worse state than now ; that intercepting 



