Slate of the Sciccrs and Water Siqqili/ of Paris. 
341 
sewer wliicli encircled the town. The outscourinfi^s were allowed 
to run into pits in the open fields ; and the night-soil collected in 
the pits underneath the houses was taken away by night, to be 
thrown first into the charnel-house of Montfaucon pell-mell with 
the bones of criminals, and afterwards into the empty plaster- 
pits of Buttes Chaumont. Such was the system which survived 
to our own times. We may add, that from the sixteenth century 
the gardeners who cultivated the marshes of the Temple, applied 
to their land the sweepings and straw-manure of the town ; and 
when Paris, spreading daily, ejected them from within its bounds, 
by means of this same manure they converted the plain of Vertus 
into a garden of inexhaustible I'ertility. Bridel, too, about 1780, 
formed the idea of solidifying, by drying, the thick liquid in the 
basins of Montfaucon, and manufacturing poudrette, by which 
the first company of adventurers was enabled to pay a rent of 
22,000/. and reap a handsome profit. 
The sanitary reform of Paris dates from 1830. The com- 
pletion of the Canal de I'Ourcq, which delivers 100,000 tons of 
water, at a level of 27 yards above the Seine, altered the whole 
state of the town. The principle was adopted that a group of 
houses constituted a block (ilot), to be scoured by a stream of 
running water, and provided with a water-post (borne fontaine) 
on a high level, and a sev/er's mouth below. An end was thus 
put to the torrents of filth which had hitherto deluged the streets. 
These were relaid in a convex form, skirted by foot pavements ; 
and under all the main thoroughfares waterpipes and drains were 
laid. The management of the night-soil underwent a like change. 
M. Mary was so adventurous as to propose to construct a syphon 
7-| miles in length, terminating in the reservoir of Bondy, for the 
purpose of emptying the pestilential pools of Montfaucon. This 
scheme was unprecedented, and apprehensions were entertained 
that the pipes would become choked by the pasty matter. After five 
years' opposition he gained his point, and the construction of the 
"depotoir" was the result. This work consists of an assemblage 
of cisterns, into which the produce of each night's carting is 
emptied. The contents are then forced by a steam-pump through 
an iron pipe to a clearing of 75 acres made in the middle of the 
Forest of Bondy, well out of reach of Paris and its atmosphere. 
M. Mary calculated that this pipe, which traversed the market- 
gardens of Noisy, might furnish liquid manure, to be sold at a 
cheap rate at convenient stations. But the practice of buying 
town-sweepings and stable-manure was so established that, until 
1850, night-soil was overlooked ; nor was any attempt made to 
introduce its use in the environs, prior to the experiments which 
led to the establishment of the farm of Vaujours. 
About 1850, the introduction of railroads gave a new impulse 
