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Cottage Sanitation. 
I. Defects arising from the Situation, Construction, or 
Condition of the House itself. 
This heading might be made to include almost the whole 
of cottage sanitation, but here it is meant to cover conditions of 
site and structure of the house itself, and even then the defects 
classed under it require further subdivision into smaller groups. 
(1) Unsuitable sites. — Cottages are often built in most 
improper places. They stand, for instance, in damp hollows. 
They are built into excavated hillsides. They are erected on 
land undrained, perhaps waterlogged. 
In fig. 1 an attempt has been made to represent a house 
built on a porous soil, soaked with water which percolates from 
Fig. 1. — Cottage, damp from A, roof leaking into ceiling ; B, unguttered eaves ; c, soil against 
outer wall, wet with soakings from garden and privy midden ; D, privy midden above level of 
ground floor. 
higher ground above, but cannot get away on account of an 
impervious layer below. 
The soil is heaped up against the back wall of the house to 
a height of several feet above the floor level, so that both the 
floor and wall are kept continually damp. Too often this higher 
ground behind is the cottage garden, plentifully manured eveiy 
spring; or, worse still, it is the site of the midden or pigsty. 
Hence it is by no means always pure water which causes the 
dampness. 
It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader that houses 
ought not to be built upon sites which have been “ made ” by 
depositing rubbish containing animal or vegetable refuse. 
(2) The want of eave-spouting. — In the same figure is shown 
what follows from the want of eave-spouting. The rain from 
