1884.] 
The Ghost of the Season. 25J 
Yet, like many other and doubtless abler men, I feel bound 
to re-examine the views which were once more thrust upon 
us on March 13th. 
I will first take in hand one of the fundamental dogmas 
of the Commission. This may be fairly embodied in the 
following words : — “ If a river be once polluted by sewage 
matter, the water of that river was for ever unfit for dietetic 
purposes, and no practical distance of flow would render 
such a river safe.” This dogma is professedly based upon 
the experiments of Prof. Frankland. He has made analyses 
of water taken from different portions of a polluted river, 
and has told us that as it flows its proportion of pollution — • 
i.e., of organic impurities — remains substantially the same. 
He has also, after determining the impurities in a sample of 
sewage, mixed similar sewage with water and shaken it up 
with air in a bottle, in order to ascertain if the impurities 
were to any extent destroyed by oxidation ! It is difficult to 
imagine how any man accustomed to scientific research, and 
a( 5 ting in good faith, could persuade himself or try to per- 
suade others that this experiment in the least degree repro- 
duced the conditions found in a river. In a river there is 
doubtless, as in the bottle, contact with air and exposure to 
light : but in the river there are agencies which were absent 
in the bottle. There are animals of low grade which devour 
the filth ; there are vegetables — all water-plants — which, 
whenever the sun shines, and even under the influence of 
diffused daylight, give off oxygen, and oxidise, or in common 
language burn up, the impurities. Both these agencies, I 
repeat, were wanting in Prof. Frankland’s bottle, whilst 
they are present more or less in every river. In the Thames 
above London they are certainly not wanting. 
But leaving this bottle experiment, as a something child- 
ishly inadequate, let us look to observations made on the 
large scale. It is well known that the River Oder, the main 
water-course of Prussian Silesia, passes through the city of 
Breslau, and receives all the household sewage and indus- 
trial waste waters of that large city. Dr. F. Hulwa has 
recently made a very careful examination of the water of 
the river. He finds naturally a progressive deterioration as 
it flows through the city, reaching its maximum at a point 
where the sewers discharge themselves. But on following 
the stream lower down there was a progressive improve- 
ment, the water being purified by the oxygen of the atmo- 
sphere and the adtion of vegetation. At the distance of 
14 kilometres below Breslau, or in English measurement a 
little more than 9 miles, Dr. Hulwa found that the sewage 
