A FEW W011DS ABOUT OUR WATER SUPPLY. 13 



that receive the bulk of the soil pollution, but the rapid growth of 

 the community will some day cause the danger point to be reached 

 and then some other water shed will have to be utilized. At the 

 present time four cemeteries are located within the boundaries of 

 our water shed, and these alone will eventually become matters of 

 serious moment. A most dangerous fallacy is the idea that polluted 

 water, after filtration through fifty, a hundred, or two hundred feet of 

 gravel is necessarily pure and wholesome. Bitter experience has 

 proven time and again that the unaided senses can not be trusted to 

 determine whether or not water is pure. The sources of pollution 

 for surface water are usually so obvious and unmistakable that they 

 appeal at once to our common sense and every day experience, but 

 the dangers that beset sub-surface water are hidden from our view 

 for the most part, and we are lulled into a false feeling of security, 

 until nature calls our attention to them in a peremptory manner. 

 Sanitary science is of such comparatively recent growth that the 

 average "practical" man will have none of it. His senses are his 

 only guide and they are frequently so blunted by long use or abuse 

 that they serve him false. I was lately called to examine a well, the 

 water from which was supposed to have been the cause of sickness. 

 It was about sixteen feet deep and distant not more than twenty feet 

 from a leeching cesspool, the bottom of which was about ten feet 

 above the well bottom. The well water was merely diluted sewage of 

 course, and yet it was almost impossible to make the owner under- 

 stand or appreciate the facts, because he had lived there and used 

 the water constantly for twenty years without evil effects. Of course 

 the very fact of his having lived there for twenty years would be 

 sufficient reason why the water should not be used for drinking pur- 

 jposes at the present time, but this was an answer that was too deep 

 to be fathomed by him ! 



This leads me to say that undoubtedly the sooner all Avells are 

 bandoned, in the thickly settled parts of our villages, the better, as 

 there is not one that can be said to be above suspicion and man}* that 

 (ire veritable sinks of corruption. For example, most wells in a lim- 

 ted neighborhood are supplied from the same stratum of water 

 earing sand or gravel. The circulation between them is constant 

 nd free. The same causes that affect one affect all, and they rise or 

 all in unison. Now, since the advent of our abundant public water 



