90 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



1st. An ample water supply, with sufficient head for flushing the closets. 



2nd. The cutting-off the sewer gas from entering into the closets from 

 the sewers. 



3rd. The satisfactory disposal of the sewage without the pollution of the 

 water-courses. 



The first condition is readily fulfilled wherever public waterworks have 

 been established and the streets reticulated. 



The second condition does not involve serious engineering difficulties, 

 but the habits of plumbers and sanitary experts are so fixed, that it would 

 be idle to expect its fulfilment except under compulsory legislation. 



The third condition is one which is full of difficulty, as it involves the 

 construction of a distinct system of sewers, separate from those required 

 for storm-water outfalls, and the maintenance, in perpetuity, of a pumping 

 station to lift the sewage to the surface at the outfall, whatever may be the 

 means adopted for its ultimate disposal. 



For the cost of these works there is no financial retm^a. 



The liquid sewage pumped up at the outfall has no commercial value, 

 and the cost of the processes required to bring it into a saleable form are too 

 costly to be undertaken with profit. 



If on the other hand the sewage is used for irrigating the land adjoining 

 the outfall, the results may be considered very satisfactory if the increased 

 productiveness of the land so irrigated recoups the cost of the maintenance 

 of the pumping station, leaving the interest of the constructive cost of the 

 sewage works as a permanent charge on the municipality by which they 

 have been undertaken. 



The cost of sewage works must not, however, be adduced as an argu- 

 ment against tlie principle of water-carriage for excreta, although it may be 

 a good reason for not introducing the system where the population is so 

 small that its cost would become a burden upon the ratepayers. 



It is easy to conceive that, in the crowded cities of the Old World, it may 

 be the most economical that could be devised. 



The real, and (as I consider) the fatal, objection to the water-closet sys- 

 tem, consists in the danger arising from the gas generated in the sewers, 

 which, if impregnated by the emanations from the excreta of diseased per- 

 sons, becomes a fertile and wide- spreading source of disease. 



It is true that with proper precautions we may cut off the direct entrance 

 of sewer-gas into our dwellings from the house-drains, but we cannot pre- 

 vent it from polluting the air of the streets, nor is it possible to say to what 

 extent the germs of disease may not be carried in this manner. 



I need scarcely remind you that typhoid fever is pertinently called "the 

 water-closet disease ;" and, if you will take even a cursory glance at the 



