30 Transactions. —Miscellaneous. 
Society the following practical considerations, which may be of use in 
improving the healthfulness of New Zealand towns. 
It is proposed to glance at the various systems that should be before 
the mind of a person who wishes to consider the most judicious manner of 
draining a town or district. 
Two prominent divisions are first noticeable: First, we have the mid- 
den, pail, and dry-earth systems ; Secondly, the water-carriage systems. 
The midden system is that which has been the first usually adopted. 
The old-fashioned midden, with a fixed receptacle-trench cut into a porous 
The trench, or pit, is often not covered in, and, when it is, it has still 
oftener no ventilation except through the seat of the closet. 
en no provision is made for the slop water of the house, it is cast 
out into a channel, which only too often conducts it on to the publie 
street, afflicting the passer-by with disgusting stenches. 
When the midden trench ig abolished, and a receptacle, such as a tub 
or pail, substituted, that can be removed weekly or fortnightly, or as 
occasion might require, then the first requirements of sanitary laws are 
attained. 
A. The various kinds of pail systems, and also the results of the adoption 
of them in towns, require closer consideration. 
The simplest method is, perhaps, that practised in Rochdale and War- 
rington, in England. : 
Rochdale has a population of 18,559 persons. It has some 5,600 
closets, with pails and ash-tubs, both of which are removed weekly by carts, 
the whole system of collection being carried out by the Corporation, and 
collecting. The death-rate has diminished as the pail system has sup- 
planted the middens. From 1870 to 1875 it averaged 29:57 per 1,000, 
whereas previously, from 1864 to 1869, it averaged 26-92. 
Another kind of pail system is that known as the Gough Absorbent 
System. Here the pails or containers, are provided with a lining of three 
or four inches of ash-tub refuse, mixed with a little soot, charcoal, 
gypsum, ete., and are removed weekly with the ash-tubs. 
This system has been in use for several years in Halifax, Woolwich, 
