Village Sanitary Economy. 
245 
i. e., for the lower half of their circumference — the arrangement 
may be made to answer the purpose without drawback. 
Some very interesting information on the value of draining 
the sub-soil of towns, irrespective of the removal of sewage, is to 
be found in the able and careful reports of Dr. Buchanan, 
appended to the 9th and lUth Reports of the Medical Officer of 
the Privy Council. 
Fifth: The Removal of Common Nuisances. 
But a very few words are necessary on this point. As already 
intimated, the Royal Sanitary Commission is devoting its atten- 
tion to the consolidation and improvement of existing laws, and 
the establishment of local sanitary authorities throughout the 
country — in every village or parish, as well as every town and 
city. It is hoped that one of the duties of such an authority will 
be to enforce the immediate removal of nuisances injurious to 
health, whether they be the collection of objectionable matter on 
private premises, the existence of putrefying refuse in common 
and priv ate ditches or drains, the obnoxious productions of trade, 
or any other object of an unhealthy character. At the present 
moment, in spite of the existence of legal facilities and the ample 
powers already explained, there is an absence of precaution to 
prevent, and of timel}' action to remove, nuisances. Boards of 
Guardians have their nuisance committee, which is sometimes 
supported by subordinate parochial committees, and nearly every- 
where there exists, in some form or other, an officer to inspect 
nuisances ; but so long as permissive enactments take the place 
of compulsory laws, personal considerations, disinclination to 
interfere with others, and delay, will prevail, and frustrate any 
effective sanitary improvement in small towns and villages. The 
country is anxiously awaiting the results of the deliberations of 
the Commission. 
Sixth: The Disposal or Utilisation of Collected Sewage 
IN AN unobjectionable MaNNEE. 
If we act upon the duty implied in the alliterative dogma of 
" rain to river and sewage to soil," and confine our attention to 
the removal of the refuse of villages by the use of either water 
or earth, it remains to be shown how, under either system, the 
sewage may be disposed of inoffensively and productively. 
If the system adopted be water sewerage, then the only mode of 
disposal open for adoption is irrigation ; and before describing 
how it can be carried out for the benefit of a village community, it 
is desirable to point out the possibility that exists of the irrigated 
land becoming an evil rather than a benefit by the concentration 
of deleterious matter on the surface and in the soil, from whence 
