Scheme of Water Supply , 
305 
1876.] 
are passed in such localities, are aware to how large an 
extent these preventible diseases are prevalent, even in 
places where beneficent Nature has granted all the neces- 
sary aids to health. The stagnant pool, the pestilential 
manure-heap, the odoriferous ditch, are but too frequently 
the immediate surroundings of a cottage or farmstead ; and 
in the midst of these, or near thereto, is often planted 
the pump for the water-supply of the household, which, 
with the purer underground waters drawn from wider areas, 
again brings to the surface some proportion of the perco= 
lating filth. 
When a deep well or a pump is absent, the water for 
household use is often drawn from still more objectionable 
sources. These may consist of shallow pools, hollowed out 
by the side of the lane or road, along which an intermittent 
stream of surface-water trickles, liable to receive natural 
or artificial impurities from the adjoining field or road. If 
the pool (dignified by the name of “ well ”) be not in direCt 
surface-communication with the ditch aforesaid, yet is it 
indirectly supplied by the percolation of the water through 
a few feet or inches of soil, which after a time becomes so 
thoroughly saturated with filth, that it ceases to aCt as a 
filter for the finer and less palpable varieties of noxious 
matter; and these, as is well known, are the causes of 
greatest injury to health, and the most fruitful sources of 
disease. When neither of the above means of water-supply 
are in use, recourse is sometimes had to the adjoining brook, 
supplying water of varying quality, but which is at present 
under no supervision for the prevention of the influx of 
matter of a noxious character. On the other hand, where 
the geological conditions permit, many villages and hamlets 
are supplied with water from perennial fountains or deep 
wells, which, drawing their waters from wide areas of 
strata through which the rainfall has percolated by the 
natural process, have thereby become suited for use. In the 
early planting of these islands such fountains were generally 
selected as the sites of hamlets or homesteads, and many of 
these remain to the present day along the borders of the 
Chalk, the Lower Greensand, and the Oolites ; while within 
the area of the London basin — as Prof. Prestwick has pointed 
out — many of the suburban villages near the city of London 
were grouped around a spring of water, or bed of gravel 
from which water could easily be drawn by shallow wells.* 
Before entering further upon the subject of this commu- 
2G 
* Anniv. Address Geol. Soc. Lond., 1872. 
