Half-a-dozcn English Sewage Farms. 
DONCASTEE. 
Doncaster, a town now probably of 20,000 inhabitants (it 
numbered 18,768 at the last census) pumps its sewage, 20,000 tons 
a week, = 600,000 gallons daily, to a height of 52 feet and a dis- 
tance of 2 miles, on to a farm of 263 acres, its own property, which 
it has taken in hand for sewage-irrigation, and since sublet to a 
tenant. The land is for the most part a free and easily worked 
soil of sufficient depth. The sewage is delivered at its highest 
point, where an open reservoir has been provided capable of 
holding 1,000,000 gallons, and thence it can be distributed over 
the whole of the area, which lies a rolling surface below it, partly, 
indeed, in successive ridges of hill and valley, almost as if 
intended for the purpose to which it is now devoted. The 
sewage from the summit-level is conveyed along these natural 
ridges, and to various positions in all the fields, from which it 
can be diverted into this, that, and the other contour-carrier 
made by plough and spade on the surface of the land. From 
these, confined by the irrigator to successive lengths of each, 
until the whole of the surface immediately below it has been 
thoroughly swilled, it distributes itself over the interval between 
it and the carrier below, it. The land has been laid out by 
Mr. B. S. Brundell, C.E., of Doncaster ; and his brother, 
Mr. Richard S. Brundell, has become the tenant of the land, 
and is now responsible for the abatement of the sewage- 
nuisance. Five acres of a level field are laid out on the highest 
part of the farm — a very pervious soil and subsoil close by the 
reservoir — for the adoption of intensive intermittent filtration. 
This is drained six feet deep at intervals of 22 yards, and is 
provided with suitable surface-carriers 22 yards apart ; so that, 
if necessary, the water may be poured on here exclusively on one 
quarter of the area for six hours at a time, and thus allowed to 
escape through the drains after being perfectly oxidised and 
rendered non-putrescible in its passage through the aerated 
subsoil. Notwithstanding, however, that the farm is only getting 
into condition for its purpose, so that its power of receiving 
sewage for agricultural use may be considered not yet fully 
developed, it is somewhat instructive and significant to learn 
that there has not yet been any difficulty in finding an area 
on the farm fitted for the daily reception of the sewage where 
it might be turned to agricultural account, as well as subjected 
to that same process of intermittent filtration in the less intensive 
form which it experiences in ordinary irrigation. In fact, 
neither the reservoir nor so-called filter-bed has yet been put to 
its intended use. 
The land last summer (1875), when I was over it, was, excepting 
2 F 2 
ill 
