522 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
storm- water to be carried off, and what can be more obvious than to provide one 
single sewer to do it all. We have been laughing for a good many years at the 
Pennsylvania Dutchman who cut two holes in his barn door, one for the cat and* 
the other for the kitten, and we may fancy that we would be equally the objects 
of ridicule if we were to imitate his conduct in planning our sewers. 
I hold, however, for myself, that the Dutchman was right in cutting the two 
holes, if it was necessary that the cat and kitten should go into the barn at the 
same time, and that is precisely what occurs when we have a rain storm. The 
storm-water has to be taken care of, and the house sewage has to pass through 
the sewers at the same time. 
Moreover the combined system has all the weight of precedent and all the 
prestige of great antiquity. It is more than 2,000 years since men have been 
building sewers, and it is natural that when modern engineers tell us that the 
storm-water and house refuse should be separated, we should hesitate to innovate 
upon what we suppose to be a venerable practice, sanctioned by the experience 
of so many centuries. 
I confess that in my own case, when the subject first came to my notice, 
some three years ago, I questioned seriously whether the proposition did not 
contain somewhere a fallacy — whether in course of time some hidden defect 
would not be discovered in the separate system which would result in its aban- 
donment. 
In point of fact, however, we are not now using our sewers as did our an- 
cestors, and the combined system is really of modern origin. Sewers were orig- 
inally built for storm-water alone, at those points where it became a nuisance, 
and what we now consider as sewage proper went into cesspools, to be periodi- 
cally removed by hand. In England it was illegal to use the sewers for house- 
hold purposes up to 1815, and it was only in 1847 that the latter use was made 
compulsory. The result of this combination has been so unsatisfactory that the 
English sanitarians and engineers have been experimenting with all sorts of 
devices to obviate or mitigate the evils thus created. In France it is still the 
rule that sewers shall serve for storm-waters alone, and a distinguished French en- 
gineer, M. Lavoinne, in giving recently an account of the Memphis systems of 
sewers, says: "It is to be noted that the system which we have described, 
is precisely the reverse of that which is generally practiced in France, where the 
principal office of the sewers is to carry off storm waters, and where they are 
made large enough to be traversed by the workmen who are to clean them. 
Moreover, in Memphis the system is connected with all the house closets, the 
solid product of which is generally with us excluded frorri the sewers." 
This matter has created a great deal of interest in France, and to give a 
better idea of the positions taken by French engineers, I will read the following 
translation of Engineer Lavoinne's conclusion upon the subject, to wit : "The 
immediate disposal of all excreta, whether liquid or solid, coming from dwelling 
houses, is evidently the best method of guarding against danger, from a sanitarian 
view. If their disposal is made through a sewer of sufficient section to pass both 
