The Ghost of the Season. 
265 
1884.] 
a little acetic acid, and thus presents the microbia, if any, 
collected together in a small bulk of liquid. This process 
is substantially what is done in the ABC process, the other 
ingredients having different duties to perform. If, then, 
Brautlecht’s method is worth anything, effluents which have 
been treated with an aluminous salt are much more likely 
to be free from baCteria than is any filtration effluent. 
It is a remarkable and instructive faCt that the majority 
of those authorities who in former days denounced sewage- 
precipitation in general, and the ABC process in particular, 
have been led, on further observation and reflection, to mo- 
dify their views. Is the ghost of the Rivers’ Pollution Com- 
mission to form the only exception ? 
It must be noticed that I do not enter into the general 
question whether the Thames is an eligible source for the 
water-supply of such a city as London. If it can only be 
made so by the entire exclusion of sewage, purified or raw, 
either the use of water-carriage for human excretions must 
be totally stopped along its course, or a large proportion of 
its water must be cut off. Dr. P. Frankland, though his 
wrath seems mainly directed against the ABC process, yet 
admits that the drainage from cultivated lands, manured 
as they often are with human excrement, is a source of 
danger. 
But suppose that the Thames is abandoned as a water- 
supply, and that in its stead we have a gigantic aqueduCt, 
bringing an artificial river of soft water from the mountains 
of Wales or Cumberland, or even from Scotland, — will, in 
this case, all danger to public health be removed ? 
Mountain waters often contain traces of lead, and soft 
waters — such as are used in certain towns of the north of 
England— aCt upon the lead service-pipes to such an extent 
as to be dangerous. Constant lead-poisoning would be, I 
submit, fully as serious an evil as an occasional outbreak of 
typhoid fever. 
VOL. VI. (THIRD SERIES) 
T 
