342 
Botes, Communications, anb 
IReviews. 
SEWAGE DISPOSAL AND RIVERS POLLUTION. 
A paper read before the Surveyors’ Institution by Mr. R. F. 
Grantham 1 conveniently summarises for us the present position of 
the chronic question of sewage disposal. Taken with the discussion 
elicited at an adjourned meeting, it enables us to glance at what has 
been and is being done, in those places where the need has become 
most pressing, towards a tolerable, if not a final, solution of a great 
difficulty. During the few years that have elapsed since the last 
epidemic of papers and discussions on the subject little knowledge 
of real or startling novelty has been acquired and no revolutionary 
modes of treatment have been introduced. There has nevertheless 
been a certain steady working out in practice of rival theories and 
recommendations, rendering possible a better adaptation of means to 
ends and a more correct prevision of success or failure in any given 
case than we formerly possessed. By a rough process of trial and 
error, repeated here and there as necessity compelled, certain data 
have been accumulated which may be utilised by the less wooden 
of the sanitary and municipal boards in their endeavours to extricate 
themselves from the dilemma in which they are often placed between 
the mandates of the Local Government Board on the one hand, 
and the advice of scientific experts on the other. 
There is something to be proud of, and something to inspire a 
less pleasurable feeling, in reviewing our national contribution to 
the perfecting of sanitation. Cleanliness and decency are valued, 
certainly, not less in Great Britain than in other countries, and we 
can look with more equanimity on the probable result of a cholera 
invasion than perhaps any other European nation. In spite of the 
sometimes amazing local opposition , 2 and the difficulties that often 
1 Recent Experience in Sewage Filtration considered in relation to River 
Pollution. Trans. Surv. Inst., Vol. XXV., Parts 12, 13, 1893. 
2 “ In the smaller towns and villages,” Mr Grantham tells us, “ the proposal 
for any scheme of sewerage, and sometimes of waterworks, is too frequently 
and successfully met with the strongest objections by the inhabitants. It is 
not long ago (in a town I had to do with where the death rate was high, where 
in former years cholera had raged, and where the people visibly suffered in 
health from the pollution at their doors) that at the Government inquiry into 
