longer abide with us; but we have not yet
exactly settled where it is to go. We pour
it out into the rivers flowing through our
towns, and pollute them as never before have
rivers been polluted since the world was
made. The soot-coloured river at Manchester;
the Tame at Birmingham, a small stream
which, even before reaching Birmingham,
receives much of the animal refuse of two
hundred and seventy thousand persons;
may be said to contain, in dry seasons,
as much sewage as water. The Thames
which, before reaching London, is polluted
by the drainage from seven hundred
thousand people, and in London deposits the
filth of hundreds of thousands upon mud-
banks exposed daily at low water, and in
these hot days festering at the heart of the
metropolis. These rivers represent the
difficulty that has to be met before the new
order of things can be regarded as established
with a proper harmony in all its parts.
Tame water at Birmingham is drunk by fifty
thousand people. Londoners now look for
their Thames drinking-water in the cleanest
places they can find; but what are they that
we should call them clean? Disease is
begotten—fish are destroyed. The fish that
had disappeared from the river at Leicester,
have returned since measures were taken
to remove the offence of the sewage. Such
measures have been already attempted in
twelve towns, by which the evil could no
longer be endured.

The difficulty, then, is new, and of the
simplest character. We now endeavour to
send—as we used not to send—the whole
filth of a town through its sewers, because it
must no longer lie under and about our houses.
We get rid of it from about houses, concentrate
it in a mass, and then—not knowing
what else to do with it—pour it into our
water-courses. We have discovered one half
of a wholesome principle of drainage; of the
other half we are in search. Where shall we
find it?

All the world knows the fertilising
principle that is in animal refuse. Obviously,
therefore, there is a defect of sense in throwing
it away, and a colossal sewer carrying
the waste of London far away to the salt-water
fishes may secure the main object in
view, as burning a house may roast a pig.
But the plan obviously is wasteful and
unphilosophical—it cannot be the true solution
of the problem—and a town so conspicuous
as London loses by it the opportunity of
setting an intelligent example to the cities of
this land and of all other lands. Abroad, in
most places, they are at cesspools still. We
have pushed one step in advance, and, when
we have determined where to plant our foot,
are quite ready to take the second.

The right way of managing this matter,
when it is found, will approve itself by looking
sensible from every point of view. Therefore
it must include a recognition of the
economic value of the sewage. Now that ia
a value which, at first, was very often
overstated. It will multiply the weight of the
grass-crops, and can, therefore, be converted
into beef and mutton; but the cost of its
collection, adaptation for use, and conveyance
to the fields, is not always to be covered by
its low specitic value. The dealing economically
with town sewage can but seldom yield
a profit to the speculator. Therefore let that
fact be accepted as the basis of discussion.
When towns have rescued their streams from
pollution, and, instead of carrying their
sewage to a distance by expensive courses,
have, at a less expense, transformed it on the
spot into a material, breeding no sickness, but,
on the contrary, able, by increasing the
produce of food, to contribute to the public
health, let them be satisfied. Let them not
call the economy bad, if, where they spent
more in casting out as filth into the sea, they
spend less in giving it as means of wealth,
gratuitously into the hands of farmers, to
whom it is worth simply labour and cartage,
or the rental upon such public works as may
convey it for them to their lands. Dirt itself
is not gold, though industry may make it so.
It usually takes full twenty shillings' worth
of work, divided among many hands, to
convert town sewage into hay or beef, and
between link and link in the chain of labour
there is little or no room left for the
interpolation of a large commercial profit. The
cost of drainage falls, therefore—so far as
rates represent it—in each case upon the
town; but, apart from the expenditure saved
by lessening disease, the wholesome and right
plan would, in any case, be cheaper than that
which is unwholesome and wrong.

But is there really a way—a simple and
reasonable way, free from wild speculation or
extravagant pretension—by which we may
come at a solution of the second half of our
new sewage problem? Can the whole mass
of a town's sewage—made innocuous to health
and useful to the surrounding land—be kept
out of its river, and, yet at no unusual cost, be
wisely got rid of? At present, we must limit
ourselves to the assertion, that a satisfactory
answer to that question can be made, and
that, by help of accurate investigation, we
trust that it may soon be made with great
precision.

First, we may note what is being done.
Edinburgh gives half its sewage to the
irrigation of the Craigintenny meadows, three
hundred and twenty-five acres, some of which
have been thus fed for more than sixty years.
The sewage matter falls and spreads over the
grass by its own weight and the absorption
of offensive gases by the soil and by vegetation
is so rapid, that in five minutes all
perceptible smell has disappeared. There is
smell, however, at Craigintenny from deposit
on foul open ditches, which are used instead
of covered drains. The grass crops yielded
from land of which part was once barren