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the defect cannot readily be discovered ; but if simple in con- 

 struction, and open for inspection, the defect can be seen at 

 once and removed. 



All house refuse should be discharged into the open air as 

 quickly and completely as possible. It is confined refuse, allowed 

 to ferment, that generates injurious gas and poisonous air. All 

 liquid refuse, or what is carried off by water drainage, should 

 first be received into a trapped receptacle, like a water closet 

 or jaw-box, (scullery slop tank). Such receptacles should be as 

 near the external wall of the house as possible, and through this 

 wall the refuse should be discharged into an open pipe, such as 

 a soil pipe, for example. This pipe should be open at top and at 

 bottom. The upper portion of the pipe, to ventilate the top, should 

 be sufficiently large, and carried above the eave of the house, 

 and so long as the external soil pipe is thus open and therefore 

 ventilated it cannot contain injurious gas ; but if it is closed at 

 top or bottom, or at both ends, it must generate foul air. The 

 more common practice is to have the soil pipe closed at top, 

 carefully closed by an expensive lead bend, and at the bottom, 

 discharging directly into the main sewer ; thereby conducting 

 all the abomination of sewer gas as effectively into the dwelling 

 as the town water is laid on. This arrangement cannot be too 

 strongly comdemned. Sometimes the soil pipe is trapped at the 

 bottom, yet directly connected with the sewer. This arrange- 

 ment is also defective, because, first, the soil pipe is not properly 

 ventilated, as there is no circulation of air throughout it, and 

 secondly, the trap at foot is not sufficient to prevent the return 

 of sewer gas from the main drain. Mr. Gray very strongly 

 recommended the adoption of an open soil pipe — that is, open at 

 top and bottom. This soil pipe should be discharged directly 

 into an open gully trapped at the town side. The open gnlly 

 is simply an open chamber forming a quick connexion between 

 the foot of the soil pipe and the mouth of the syphon trap, and 

 for this purpose the bottom of the gully has a rapid fall, so that 

 nothing could rest upon it. The syphon trap should be as 

 near the gully as possible, so as to be reached from the gully 

 for cleansing, and by this very simple arrangement all local 



