SEWAGE AND SEWERAGE. 61 
rain creates mountain torrents ; an hour will serve to convert a pebbly path over 
which one has walked, into a hoarse, raging stream, defying a passage. On this oc- 
sion El Chico, as the clouds lifted, was as pretty as a picture. It differs from 
other Mexican villages in having peaked thatched roofs, and with its pointed caps 
nestled against the mountain, is unusually attractive to the traveler's eye. In ev- 
ery direction when crossing the mountains can be seen the tall red chimneys of 
the mines. — Cor. Globe- Democrat. 
SEWAGE AND SEWERAGE. 
The report of Mr. James T. Gardiner to the N. Y. State Board of Health on 
the methods of sewerage for cities and large villages is a most valuable and in- 
teresting document. Mr. Gardiner begins with an unqualified condemnation of 
the system of privy-vaults and cess-pools; pronounces "dry removal" by means 
of earth-closets or pails to be much better, but open to serious objections, as re- 
quiring constant vigilance and intelligence on the part of householders ; declares 
the ordinary method (j)f combined sewerage, in which both the sewage proper 
and the much larger body of storm-water are conveyed together in subterranean 
sewers to be, from the sanitary stand-point, a failure; and finally praises as the 
best plan yet devised, the separate sewerage, by which excreta, slops, and waste- 
water are removed through mains, while storm water is either provided with sep- 
arate conduits of large dimensions, or led off on the surface to natural channels 
of outflow. The most perfect example of this system is found in the sewerage 
of the city of Memphis, designed by Col. George E. Waring, the eminent sani- 
tary engineer, and operated since 1880 with complete success. Mr. Gardiner 
quotes at length from a report of Mr. C. H. Latrobe, who examined the Memphis 
system for the city of Baltimore. 
The most striking points of Mr. Gardiner's paper are these : 
I. There is probably no such thing as a poisonous ''sewer-gas," to which the 
diseases caused by the admission of sewer air into dwellings may be ascribed. 
No proof exists that ammonia, sulphureted hydrogen, or any other gaseous prod- 
ucts of organic decomposition, do or can cause zymotic diseases. On the con- 
trary there is much evidence going to show that these diseases are produced 
according to the so-called "germ theory," by bacteria, the germs of which are 
developed in the sewer-air under the favoring conditions of heat, moisture, dark- 
ness, and the presence of ammonia, and growing thus on the damp walls of 
sewers, may float off and be borne like dust on the atmospheric currents. 
The reader's first impression may be, that this is a distinction of little prac- 
tical importance. What difference does it make to the victim of bad plumbing, 
to be told that he is poisoned, not by the, gas from the sewer, but by germs in 
the gas from the sewer ? The practical difference to the moribund victim may 
indeed be nothing ; but it is highly important to prudent people, not yet about to 
die, and to sanitary engineers. For it follows, first, that the odor of sewer-gas, 
