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Sanitary Vagaries: 
[February, 
VI. SANITARY VAGARIES: 
THE NEW RIVERS’ POLLUTION BILL. 
By “ Argus.” 
W HEN the sudden approach of danger finds John Bull, 
as usual, unprepared, he passes at once from heed- 
lessness to panic, and adopts measures which cer- 
tainly do not bear the stamp of sober reason. This rule has 
been fully verified by occasion of the recent — and perhaps 
future — approach of the Asiatic cholera. 
The Metropolitan Board of Works, obliged to take some 
steps to correct the nuisance due to the discharge of sewage 
at Crossness and Barking Creek, but unwilling to adopt any 
really efficient means, came upon the costly and absurd 
scheme of pouring first chloride of lime and then sodium 
permanganate into the river. 
Then, as a slight concession to common sense, they added 
these same chemical agents to the sewage as discharged ! It 
is not too much to say that had the late chemical adviser to 
the Board, Mr. Keats, still been alive this expensive farce 
would never have been heard of. 
In the course of the season Sir J. B. Lawes delivered him- 
self of the profound suggestion that we should not seek to 
apply the sewage of our cities to the land, but should cheer- 
fully carry it to the sea, — of course at an enormous outlay — 
in the hope that it will thence come back to us in the form 
of fish ! It is needless to enquire what proportion of the 
organic matter in the sewage would be direCtly or indiredtlv 
eaten by food fishes. But I think the public will agree with 
me when I say that until the so-called “ Bummarees ” are 
completely improved out of existence feeding fishes will prove 
from a national point of view a very poor investment. 
But even this scheme is outdone by the proposal of Prof. 
Henry Robinson, brought forward at the Dublin meeting of 
the “Sanitary Institute,” and reported in the Sanitary 
Record for October last. This gentleman — an engineer if I 
mistake not — wishes to adapt clay lands for irrigation by 
digging it out to a depth of six feet, burning it into layers 
interspersed with an occasional layer of open alluvial soil. 
If such a plot is well drained it will, we are told, continu- 
ously clarify the sewage of 1500 to the acre. The cost of 
preparation, however, reaches, according to the proposer’s 
