410 
Half-a-dozen English Sewage Farms. 
almost everywhere incurred. The agricultural remedy for the 
sewage nuisance remains indeed undoubted — but agricultural 
utilisation has almost everywhere involved an expenditure in 
excess of the receipts. Instead of indulging in any further esti- 
mates in connection with a subject which is at least ten years 
old, it has now been thought desirable to give a description of 
some of the more noteworthy examples of the sewage farms- 
which have for several years been in operation, notwithstanding 
the difficulty of finding any instance of a profitable result : and 
I have selected Cheltenham, Leamington, Tunbridge Wells, 
Chorley, Doncaster, and Bedford, as fairly representing the 
various soils and circumstances under Avhich sewage irrigation 
has been adopted in various parts of the country. An account 
of the expenses and returns of these six towns, as regards their 
sewage farms, may perhaps suggest considerations and conclu- 
sions tending to less expensive experience hereafter. 
Cheltenham. 
Cheltenham, a town of 42,000 inhabitants, sends the whole of 
its drainage-water to a distance of about three miles over a farm 
of 131 acres on the Lias-clay formation. The houses, some 
8000 in number, are generally provided with water-closets, and 
it may be assumed that the Cheltenham sewage contains nearly 
the whole of the personal waste of the population. It is con- 
veyed first to tanks, 44 yards long by 10 yards wide, and 8 feet 
deep, in which, by a certain rough filtration and subsidence, it 
is separated from its heavier mud ; and the remainder flows 
onwards to the land. The overflow from the tanks is made to 
drive a turbine, by which the sludge is lifted above the level of 
the yard close by, where the house-ash, with other town-refuse 
collected by the scavenger's cart, is placed conveniently to receive 
it ; and the compost is readily bought by farmers and market- 
gardeners in the neighbourhood for 2s. per cubic yard, or 2s. 6«?. 
when screened. Disregarding the outlay on the original provi- 
sion of these tanks, which is covered by a farthing rate for thirty 
years, their annual costs and returns nearly balance one another, 
as will be seen by the annexed Table (p. 411). ^ 
The heavier expenses specified in the first year are explained 
by the fact tliat, at first, perchloride of iron was used as a disin- 
fectant. A simple mechanical filtration through a vertical dia- 
phragm in the tank, combined with rest in alternate divisions of 
it — the overflow of each in turn pumping the mud which has 
settled in the other — is now the whole of the process to which 
the sewage is subjected here. From these tanks — situated at the 
two points to which the whole drainage of the town can most 
