94 The Disposal of Sen-age hj Small Towns and Villages. 
•would help to cleanse the short sewer, and render the necessity 
of flushing less frequent. The flushing apparatus has a basin, 
or reservoir, which does not tip until it is full. It has hitherto 
worked fairly 'well, but, if not constantly attended to, it may 
soon get out of order and cease to act. These contrivances cannot 
be too simple. 
A cheap and apparently successful example of village sewage- 
irrigation is furnished at Kebworfh Beauchamp. The cost of 
the sewage- works and settling-tanks was only 120/., and the 
sewage irrigates 5 acres of grass-land, held on a twenty-one years' 
lease at 30/., and is sub-let to a yearly tenant for 24?. 10s. No 
complaint has been made of the sewage being at all offensive 
since the settling-tanks were added, three or four years ago. 
The inclusion of a town of the importance of Henley-on- 
Thames is hardly within the scope of this paper; but hearing 
that a new and greatly improved system of sewage was just 
started there, it seemed advisable to inspect it. The engineering 
feat of taking the sewage to the lowest possible point, and then 
pumping it to the summit of the nearest hill, has been success- 
fully accomplished at Henley. Shone's compressed-air system 
is worked by a 27 horse-power steam engine, and the sewage is 
lifted 120 feet, and debvered into settling-tanks. It then irri- 
gates about 4 acres of land, 1^ acres of which are planted 
with osiers, and the rest devoted to the growth of mangel 
and Italian rye-grass. There is no outfall, the water percolating 
through the deep strata of the Upper Chalk, and being seen no 
more. But the land is already supposed to become clogged, and 
the sludge is a nuisance ; so the Town Council have decided to 
adopt the treatment of Messrs. Jagger & Turley, of Leeds, that 
burns the house-refuse to a carbon, which is to be employed in the 
deodorisation of the sewage, and for the more rapid deposition 
of the sludge on the settling-tanks. Then the effluent passes 
through a filter of carbon and cinders, by which time the sewage 
becomes " so clear and odourless." and is of such a " high stan- 
dard of purity, that it might be turned into any river." But it 
is to be further improved — if that is possible — by irrigating the 
4 acres of land ; so the sewage of Henley (if it ever does reach 
the Thames after its long subterranean passage) ought cer- 
tainly to be the purest effluent in the world. 
Having now recorded a few successful examples of the dis- 
posal of sewage in some towns and villages, it is hardly neces- 
cary to particularise those Sanitary Authorities where common 
sewage-farming is practised on a small scale. Italian rye-grass 
is the only crop to which raw sewage can be directly applied with 
