CaupsELL.—Draining of Towns. 85 
It is to be hoped that in this country the local authorities will be 
empowered to lay the whole of the house drains, as they are most important 
portions of a drainage scheme, and, when left to builders or jobbing work- 
men, are seldom laid properly, and with cement joints when they pass under 
houses. : 
The most efficient means of keeping sewer gases from the interior of 
houses, is to have the sink and soil pipes discharging upon the grating of a 
small receptacle outside the house, and which is connected with the sewer, 
or the soil pipe can be continued up to the roof, so as to form a ventilating 
shaft. Nothing short of complete disconnection will stop the gases. They 
have been proved by Dr. Fergus, at the meeting of the Social Science As- 
. sociation, in 1874, by experiments, to pass through water-traps. Traps 
are also constantly getting choked and out of order; but if there is a dis- 
connection of the sink-pipe, any sticks or brushes that have been forced 
“down the pipe by servants are at once intercepted. 
.. "The chief defects of a water-carriage system are always in the faulty 
workmanship of the house-connections. Gas and Water Companies take 
care that they have the laying down of the house-connections in their 
hands; and so should that department of work be as carefully done for 
the sewers as for the gas or water. 
Flushing arrangements are required in every town to clear those pipes 
that have low falls, and are liable to have deposits during the ordinary flow 
through them. Chambers are built specially for this purpose with pen- 
stocks, worked by chains or screws or self-acting counterpoises. It is 
stated, in the First Report of the Health of Towns Commission, that, 
on the occasion of one trial, a length of two and a-half miles of sewer 
was cleaned by one flush, with a four-foot head of water, and carrying 
21 yards of sediment away. The cause of sediment is nearly always the 
road sand that has found its way into the drains from the gullies. 
Charcoal baskets have been used to a very great extent in the venti- 
lators to absorb the noxious vapours rising from them, but they are now 
falling into disuse, as it has been found that free circulation of air through 
the sewers has a much greater beneficial effect. 
The streets and roads are provided with gullies to catch the flow of 
water along the channels. They are usually four feet deep and three feet 
by two feet in plan, and are well trapped if they are connected with 
sewers; but, on the separate system, the road drains would not require 
that precaution. 
In connection with this subject it may be stated that the high proportion 
of the deaths in New Zealand towns, due to zymotic diseases—viz., dysentery, 
diarrhea, enteric and typhus fevers, cholera, ctc.—show plainly that there 
