2 
what is contended for the earth-closet is, that 
it would materially assist in promoting this very 
desirable state of the atmosphere, by prevent- 
ing the accumulations — the costly accumu- 
lations— of ooze in every backward in the 
country. The commercial value of soil from 
the “ earth closet, ” as compared with the ooze 
of cesspits, will bear mention further on. 
As things are, in every civilized city, town, or 
village in the world, there are three kinds 
of filth which accumulate wherever two 
or three people are gathered together. 
1. Slops ; 2. Ashes ; and 3. Ordure. 
If the three could be kept quite 
separate — they are in some few places here and 
there, so therefore the if is not very awkward, 
— and be removed separately, not so much evil 
would accrue to the air. The slops can always 
be disposed of when there is a flow of water, 
as there is now from Enoggera, which is quite 
adequate to diluting them to harmlessness ; 
but when the contents of closets get floated out 
with them, as is so often the case in Melbourne, 
down the surface-drains (there being no other 
drains there any more than there are here in 
Brisbane), then the “ volatile-organic-matter” 
nuisance proclaims itself very loudly. The 
ashes, again, amongst which are the kitchen 
offal and waste — always excepting “ gone meat” 
— do not give off any “ volatile organic matter” 
to speak of, provided always the scullery-maid 
does not seek to convert them into the reeking 
ooze so familiar to the cleaners of “ Man- 
chester middens” ; and they and the stable 
litter, which are generally associated, can be got 
rid of even in the daytime without causing any 
very violent shock to the sense of smell. But 
to hide, remove, and bury the or Jure, what 
infinite shifts has unhappy man not been put 
to ? To enumerate a few of the methods 
which have from time to time been adopted to 
get rid of the foecal emanations about towns 
and buildings, I might mention the ordinary 
privy with its oozing cesspool, periodically 
emptied by the nightman ; and who, I wonder, 
has not experienced the horrors of the disgusting 
process ? The modern water-closet is another 
method which, so far as the individual house in 
which it is established is concerned, is the best 
that has obtained hitherto; hut when the wide- 
spread evils attendant on this system, through 
the necessary underground drains which con- 
vey the contents away from the closets de- 
bouching into the tidal and other streams 
round about, is taken into consideration, the 
water-closet is anything but an unmixed 
benefit. As before remarked, the dangerous 
<c volatile organic matter ” is only indefinitely 
increased in proportion to the largeness of the 
volume of moist, foetid, putrefying matter, and 
which the water-closet system only augments 
to the detriment of whole populations. 
So much alive are the chemists and 
sanitary reformers to the baneful influences of 
accumulations of alTine excrementitious 
matters, and so well aware of the ineffi- 
caey of the ordinary systems of uuder- 
ground drainage to abate the evils 
that arise from them, that they have from 
time to time adopted schemes for deodorizing 
and utilizing sewage matters, backed by the 
strongest scientific evidence and, rendered at- 
tractive by prospects of profit as ‘the most 
powerful of arguments with a world bent on 
the acquisition of “ filthy lucre.” They have 
invented all manner of disinfectants to render 
innocuous the emanations and evaporations from 
the foulness arising from the necessities of 
man. They have tried to kill the gases by 
charcoal and other filters, and, at other times, 
to carry them high into the air by large venti- 
lating shafts — “smelling-bottles” as they are 
sometimes called. Again, they have attempted 
to intercept the drains by series of tanks, 
hoping to catch the solid matters and let the 
liquidfree. This particular scheme wasprosecuted 
with zeal by no less a personage than the late 
Prince Consort in draining Windsor Castle, so 
intolerable and unbearable had that royal man- 
sion become to Imperial nerves ; and, as far as 
I have been able to ascertain from reading and 
observation, this plan will prove the safest and 
cheapest, and even a profitable one. It is 
worthy of remark that any such system is only 
rendered necessary by the modern water-closet, 
as the quantity of water necessary for a thorough 
flushing must have an escape, for no cesspool 
would long absorb the quantity of water and 
solid matter of the closet without frequent 
cleansing, or else produce the inevitable ooze 
from the surface, — anything but a “ Pierian 
spring,” unless in the solemn lessons it gives. 
The ordinary privy does not generally require 
draining unless rain water gets into it. 
I would here mention another mode, which 
has been largely adopted in France and 
America, for disposing of night soil, but which 
is scarcely adapted to the wants contingent on 
the water-closet system. The mode I refer to 
is the pneumatic waggon for extracting silently 
and invisibly the contents of cesspits. I say it 
is scarcely adapted to the water-closet system, 
because it would be one continual emptying ; 
but for ordinary privies, no modern invention 
has yet done so much to lessen the revolting 
abomination attendant on the functions of the 
nightman ; and my surprise is that , with all 
the boasted advancement of learning on these 
matters in our time, it has not been universally 
adopted. The matter has not been lost sight 
of, for I find that Mr. Macfarlane, of Glasgow, 
read a paper before the Philosophical Society 
there in April, 1857, advocating this very 
system, but adapted to the existing system of 
drainage, which deserves the attention of every 
one who wishes to preserve the air he breathes 
pure and wholesome. 
How, having given a very cursory outline of 
the various methods of disposing of sewage 
matters, it remains to say what I can on some 
