Villafje Sanitary Economy. 
249 
" villages," and should specify the size (breathing-spaces) of living and sleeping 
rooms. On the ground-floors of all now buildings there should be one room 
at least with a boarded floor, and all walls should be built with a damp-course 
above the ground-line to prevent the rising of moisture within the walls above 
ground. 
All local executive authorities should be compelled to provide a public 
water-supply at constant service, where it can be secured at a cost not 
exceeding 2d. per dwelling per week ; and in case of inability to do this, 
pum[)S for general use, or a stored supply, should be provided to meet seasons 
of drought. 
A chemical standard of purity of drinking-water should be established by 
Government, by which test it could at all times be determined whether the 
quality of supply is properly maintained by the executive. 
In the absence of a public water-supply, the owners of all dwellings 
occupied by the labouring classes should be obliged to sink a well where 
spring-water can be readily obtained ; or to collect the rain-water from the 
roofs into underground tanks, where such may not be the case. 
Where a constant supply of water, or a certain provision during times 
of drought, is secured at public expense, the owners of labourers' dwellings 
sliould be compelled to lay on water from the public main at their private 
cost, instead of, or in addition to, sinking a private well or collecting the roof- 
water in a private tank. 
Every local executive authority in villages, as well as in towns, should bu 
compelled to construct and maintain an under-ground water-tight sewer (of a 
size to meet the requirements of the place) to discharge all liquid refuse ; and 
no open sewer should be permitted to exist between the point where dwellings 
commence and end. 
Tlie owners of existing as well as future dwellings of the labouring classes 
should be compelled to construct privies or closets for the ajiplication of earth 
or water, and to discontinue the use of cesspits altogether where from their 
])roximity of position or the porosity of the soil neighbouring wells may become 
tainted by the f)ereolation of sewage into them. 
The owners of all dwellings occupied by the labouring classes should be 
obliged to connect the sewerage of each dwelling with the common sewer, so 
that the liquid refuse may go directly into it. 
All public sewers should be perfectly ventilated by means distinct from 
street guUyholes, and should be periodically flushed. 
A standard of quality (on Government authority) should be adopted as a 
test of all refuse liquid discharged into streams or ditches, and no etBuent 
water from irrigated lands should pass into streams below the standard 
of quality. 
AH lands to be irrigated with sewage should be first underdrained with 
reference to the system of irrigation, if not naturally drained ; and in the case 
of small village populations, the sewage should be applied to gardens for the 
labouring poor, by some arrangement admitting of the land being irrigated for 
tw-o, three, or four years together, and growing rye-grass and other sewage 
crops alternately, with its use for the same period as garden-laud, to be 
cultivated by spade husbandry. Sewage-irrigated lands and burial-grounds- 
should not be permitted to exist within a distance which will admit of the 
percolation of eiTluent water through the soil into wells. 
All lands and grounds within the inhabited districts, which are wet in the 
subsoil, should be perfectly underdrained, as a part of the sewerage system 
essential to health. 
All turnpike-roads and public roads in towns and villages, under which 
sewers may be laid, should be placed imder the control of the executive 
VOL. VI. — S. S. S 
