WATEK SUPPLY TO SYDNEY BY GRAVITATION. 131 



The importance of an exhaustive consideration of this water 

 question being at present paramount, I ask for the privilege of 

 supporting the above remarks, as bearing upon our present 

 Sydney water supply by quoting from the able work of John- 

 ston, who devoted a most useful life to the study of practical 

 chemistry for the benefit of man. At page 40 of vol. 1 of his 

 book on the " Chemistry of Common Life," he says : " As the 

 solvent power of water enables it to take up many substances 

 from rocks and soils through which it passes, it often happens 

 that in the neighbourhood of dwellings and farm-yards, and 

 especially in towns, the water of wells becomes very impure and 

 even unwholesome to drink. The rains that fall upon the filth that 

 accumulates in towns, wash out the soluble substances it contains, 

 carry them into the soil, and through this, by degrees, into the 

 wells by which the wants of the inhabitants are supplied. This 

 has often been productive of serious and fatal disease. It shows, 

 therefore, the propriety of preventing, as far as possible, the 

 accumulation of refuse, and, where such accumulation is 

 unavoidable, of placing it at the greatest distance from wells 

 which yield water for daily use. And especially it shows the 

 necessity of bringing water from a distance for the supply of 

 large cities." 



Up to late years, and even now, the Sydney water supply has 

 been valuable, and is yet a great boon for the city ; but by com- 

 paring past seasons as known to myself from 1834, and on for 

 twenty-five years since then, it behoves us to be guarded against 

 the delusion of thinking that the wetter experience of the later 

 fifteen or sixteen years will be continued uninterruptedly. The 

 Botany supply has been to us as a nurse's valuable feeding-bottle 

 for the infant city ; but it is high time to wean Sydney from 

 such a mode of sustenance, although I would never advocate the 

 actual dismantling of that feeding-bottle, even when another 

 system of supply may come in. 



Before closing my remarks in general reply, I would beg to 

 say that objections have been raised to my high gravitation and 

 pressure plan in pipes, on the plea of its expense. Few, if any, 

 other objections that have been raised against my water supply 

 scheme seem to me to be less tenable than this one. By my 

 proposed mode of laying strong wrought-iron pipes on sleepers 

 along the line of transit, a great deal of engineering of levels and 

 excavations would be saved, and to such an extent as to make 

 this method of leading water under pressure nearly, if not quite, 

 as cheap as making open aqueducts through solid sandstone, or 

 pitched aqueducts (paved in cement) there or anywhere else, 

 whilst at the same time this mode of confined conduit of the 

 waters from high elevations render the iron piping to be an engine 

 of enormous force, when properly utilized for its hydraulic power, 



