1885.] 
The New Rivers' Pollution Bill. 
87 
possibly based ? The chief novelty which I can perceive is 
that the “ Recommendations ” of the Rivers’ Pollution 
Commission are here introduced and adopted as “ standards 
of purity.” Is it then to be understood that the proposed 
measure is intended not so much to promote public health 
as to soothe the wounded feelings of the ex-Commissioners ? 
During the discussion which took place upon the reading 
of Dr. P. Frankland’s paper the sanitary world was enter- 
tained with an account of the tenacity of life displayed by 
septic and pathogenic microbia. Whether the experiments 
on which the leffiurer’s statement was founded were fairly 
performed, or were conclusive, is not now the question. 
But the tenacity of life of disease-germs is trifling compared 
with that of the “ Recommendations.” They have been 
weighed and found wanting. They have been exposed to 
currents of calm critical inquiry and fried, so to speak, in 
derision. Yet in official brains — nowhere else — they still 
survive. Surely they are the most singular disease-germs 
ever known ! 
I may be told, as I am fully aware, that these “ Recom- 
mendations ” were proposed by a chemist of undoubted 
eminence, after careful and prolonged inquiry. I admit, 
most cheerfully, the eminence of the chemist in question, 
but I deny his practical sense and his power of freeing him- 
self from “ dominant ideas.” It is written that this same 
chemist once applied for and obtained a patent for using 
common crystalline alum as a commercial source for the 
salts of potash ! Can the absence of practicality be much 
more plainly shown ? 
I have been told by an advocate of the “ Recommenda- 
tions ” that they would admit such water as that of the 
Irwell below Manchester. If this is the case, what more is 
needed to justify their rejection ? 
The great fault of the new Bill is that it pays no regard 
to the river itself, but looks merely at the quality — not the 
quantity — of the waters poured into it from manufacturing 
establishments, the sewers of towns, &c. If each of these 
emits abundance of water slightly within the proposed 
standards, the river, especially if small, will be brought to 
the condition of the Aire, the Calder, or the Irwell. 
As concerns dissolved mineral impurities the Bill revels 
in inconsistency. It fixes a very stringent limit for arsenic, 
and to the neutral salts of soda, lime, and magnesia it 
gives free admission in whatever proportion. For all other 
metals it assigns one common limit — 2 parts by weight in 
100, oco. Now, as the “Chemical News ” very justly argues, 
