16 T. P. ANDERSON STUART. 



appears to me something which should be done, and that a little 

 agitation is needed. I may point out our curious inconsistency in 

 imposing a prolonged quarantine on imported dogs lest they should 

 bring disease into the Colony, while we so utterly neglect the 

 transmission of disease from dogs already here. I might here 

 incidentally draw attention to the prize offered by the Council of 

 this Society for the best results of original research on the subject 

 of the origin of multiple hydatids in man, and as the competition 

 is open to all comers, I trust that some of our younger colonial 

 graduates may find the time and have the inclination, as they 

 unquestionably have the opportunity, to do something towards the 

 settlement of the question. 



DISPOSAL OF SEWAGE— SEWAGE FARMS. 



One of the greatest difficulties one has to encounter in these 

 colonies is the collection and disposal of sewage, for there are special 

 difficulties in the way of both. The collection of it is compara- 

 tively costly, because owing to the semi-tropical character of the 

 rainfall, either the wholly or partially separate system has to be 

 adopted in order to carry off the storm waters, or the sewers must 

 be made large enough to do so, and these are then much too large 

 for the ordinary sewage. This undue size of the sewer, too, brings 

 its own troubles, because the difficulty of proper flushing and 

 ventilation is immensely increased. 



Our notions as to the disposal of sewage have of late years been 

 much affected by the discovery of the precise manner in which 

 nature goes about its business in this respect. A little reflection 

 will show one that, seeing how tolerably constant is the sum of 

 living organisms on the earth's surface at any given time, a mar- 

 vellous process of disposal of the dead bodies of plants and animals 

 must constantly be going on. Formerly it was supposed that 

 principally chemical processes, and mainly direct oxidation by the 

 oxygen of the air, effected the decomposition of the organic remains. 

 Now we know that the change in buried remains is mainly due 

 to the vital activity of the omnipresent microbes. 



