TEE 
QUEENSLAND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY. 
(From the Queensland, Guardian , August 29, 1866.) 
At a meeting of the Queensland Philosophi- 
cal Society held on the 27th instant, the Rev. 
James Matthews in the chair, Mr. Tiffin read 
the following paper 
On the Use op Earth Closets as a Means 
op Preventing the Vitiation of the 
Air. 
The vexed question of perfect sanitary ar- 
rangements involves several considerations ; 
hence a rough outline of some few of them by 
•way of introduction will perhaps better clear 
the way to what I have to elucidate, than by 
plunging at once into a description of the 
“ earth closet,” and its supposed advantages 
as a sanitary appliance. 
First of all we have to consider the ends 
sought to be attained by sanitary appliances. 
Jhese are, it may be conceded, comprised in 
the three great wants of mangood food, clean 
water, and pure air ; these three, although 
inextricably connected in many points, are 
capable of being treated of separately. It is to 
the last, therefore, I would wish to confine to 
few observations which are to follow. 
To attain pure, scentless, speckless, life-giving 
air millions on millions of wealth have been, 
and are now being, expen led in all the great 
and little centres of population throughout the 
civilised world. The air of towns is thick with 
with soot, dust — dust impregnated with 
the droppings of all kinds of cattle 
and birds— odours and gases foreign to the 
component parts of air, which are four parts 
of azotic and one part of oxygen gas. Dr. 
Robinson, in a paper read before the British 
Association, says, in reference to one of the 
above-mentioned classes of “organic effluvia” : 
— “ The third class of organic effluvia is one to 
which I attach great importance, from the 
belief that not only are those volatile organic 
matters often, perhaps generally, poisonous in 
themselves, but that they are also injurious to 
an incalculable extent bv sheltering, nourish- 
ing, and so propagating the noxious germs 
liable at all times to be suspended in the 
atmosphere. And if it can be demonstrated 
that volatile organic matter is present, under 
certain circumstances, in the air surrounding 
us, there is no more difficulty in believing it 
capable of nourishing and contributing to the 
growth and development of contiguous germs, 
than in supposing the animalcules present in 
water to derive their chief support from the 
animal and vegetable matters dissolved or sus- 
pended in it. That organic matter is present 
in the atmosphere might at once be inferred 
from the varied odours proceeding from plants 
and animals, and from the injurious effects 
exercised on living animals by exposure for a 
length of time to accumulations of such 
effluvia. But modern chemistry has converted 
this probability into a certainty. Vauquelin, 
on analysing the liquid obtained by the de- 
composition of marsh dews, found in the resi- 
due an organic substance which blackened or 
charred on exposure to heat. Zmmerman has 
described, under the name of c pyrrhine,’ vola- 
tile organic matter universally present in rain 
and snow water.” I need not call to mind the 
determination arrived at by the scientific men 
last year, that rinderpest was conveyed in 
the air — so likewise cholera ; and fevers, con- 
sumptions, and scrofulous diseases are propa- 
gated by the agency of the atmosphere. Now, 
observe particularly that it is “volatile organic 
matter” that renders the air dangerous and 
impure, and the damp dewy night air more so 
than the air of day which the sun’s light and 
heat penetrates — and it will be seen at once 
that this “ volatile organic matter” cannot 
rise from any dry substance, but must generate 
in moisture somewhere. It originates in the 
decaying carcase of an animal just dead with 
all the natural juices so recently coursing 
through it ; it originates in some rotting heap 
of vegetation scattered here and there ; it 
originates in the ooze of swamps, cesspools, 
drains leading nowhither, and the slop-holes of 
every house and hovel in this land and every 
other land. It does not originate in the clear 
flowing river or the wide-rolling ocean ; nor 
does it originate in the parched and dusty 
country where heaps of bones lie bleaching in 
the sun. 
Now, it is clear that everything that tends 
to dry up those oozing beds of filth which lie 
everywhere around, from which are continually 
being disengaged prolific crops of noxious 
volatile matter, like so much thistledown, tends 
to make the life of every human being more 
endurable, by reducing the air we breathe to 
something more like its normal state. Now, 
