production by keeping them warm, it is probable that they will become tuberculous.

Sir Frederick Fitzwygram, in his exhaustive treatise on the Horse, is very careful to insist on the perfect ventilation of stables, and tells us of certain London cab stables where the health of the horses became excellent after the doors and windows were removed.

In the construction of stables Sir Frederick Fitzwygram insists on the danger of underground drains, and advises that the drainage of a stable shall be by open gutters only, and that these gutters shall lead to gullies removed many yards from the stable door. This is rational common sense, and must be applied not only to stables, but to human habitations also.

Trapped gullies are only miniature cesspools, and the presence of such contrivances within stables or cowhouses means that the animals are breathing the gases of putrefaction whenever they are within doors.

It is a question whether in such places we do not often go to a huge expense in order to do things wrongly.

I call to mind three cow-houses which I visited in the autumn of 1895. One was at a very old-fashioned manor-house near Alresford, Hants, and was a highpitched, thatched, barn-like building, which had been used for cows time out of mind.' There was an open door at either end; the floor of the stalls was of beaten earth, and the middle passage between the stalls was of flint pitching. The stalls had a very slight slope from head to tail, and there was no drain of any kind, and no water-tap for the adulteration of the milk or the 'swilling down' of the building. The dung was removed every morning with shovel and besom, and, if necessary, some earth was thrown upon the floor of the stalls. This house was fragrant, and filled with the

sweet breath of kine and the aroma of good upland hay. There was no suggestion or suspicion of foulness. The urine in this case must have soaked away to a great extent into the earth and between the pitching, and had done so in this place, perhaps, for centuries.

The other two cow-houses were of a different order. One was at an establishment devoted to giving technical instruction in dairying, and the other belonged to a milkman in a country town. Both had cost much money, with impermeable bricked floors, water-taps for swilling down, and drains within the building for carrying away the valuable dung and urine. They were both damp, with water lying between and in the grooves of the bricks, and both had a sickening smell of putrefaction. Neither of these last two cow-houses was desirable place in which to collect milk. I have little doubt that the Bacterium coli, which lives in water, was very abundant in both of them.

Water (unless it be boiling hot and used with abundance of soap and a scrubbing-brush) is entirely out of place in cow-houses, dairies, and butchers' shops.

Putrefaction is easily attained by swilling with cold water. Real cleanliness is unattainable in this way.

The dung and urine of all domestic animals is invaluable for the farm and garden, and it all ought to be carefully preserved. I feel that the best way of doing so would be to allow the stalls of stables, cow-houses, piggeries, &c., to have a very gentle slope to a gutter or trough filled with absorbent material, such as earth or peat moss, and protected by a grating. This trough would be cleaned out whenever it became in the least offensive, and thus the whole of the urine would be saved for the farm.

It needs hardly to be said that all animal houses

must be kept scrupulously clean. There must be no accumulations of dung, and all such ordure must be removed daily. The besom and shovel and wheelbarrow are the only proper tools for doing this.

If 'water-carried sewage' be introduced on the farm the ruin of the farmer is more certain than it is at present.

CONSTRUCTION OF WELLS

It is admitted that humus is one of the best filtering materials for water, and that water from a river full of living organisms is to a large extent freed from them by filtering through a few feet of the humus on its banks. In the past few years Sir E. Frankland demonstrated that water of singular microbial purity could be obtained from the gravel beds which in places flank the Thames. Such water, one must suppose, is obtained from ground water which has fallen upon the earth, has filtered through it, and is slowly flowing towards the river. The purifying agent in these cases is mainly the living humus which lies upon the surface, although the subsoil cannot be without some effect. These facts must alter our attitude towards surface wells, and must teach us what to a great extent has been admitted that the purity of surface wells must depend more upon the mode of construction and the surroundings of the well than upon its depth. Wells are polluted by foulness which has reached the subsoil without being subjected to the purifying influence of the humus; and there are many facts which go to show that if foul water gets to the under side of the humus without going through it its purification in the subsoil is far from certain. The Lausen epidemic, the Worthing epidemic, and the pollution of the deep well sunk in the sandstone at Liverpool,

seem to show us that percolation through a mile of underground strata entails no certain purification, and that wells 80 ft. or 400 ft. deep are not safe if fissures allow the contents of cesspools, leaking under pressure, to trickle into them. The almost universal condemnation of surface wells and their frequent pollution are mainly due to the fact that we take our filthy and dangerous liquids through the humus in pipes, and thus ensure at great expense that they cannot be subjected to purification by it. If these underground pipes leak, the mischief caused by pollution of wells may be very far-reaching. It is very probable that foul water continuously thrown on the same spot of ground may in time work its way to a well and thus pollute it. Such ground, which is constantly soaked, be it remembered, is never tilled, because tillage is impossible. For ground to be tillable it is essential that reasonable breathing-time should be allowed. I am not altogether sure (although I hardly dare utter such a heresy) that a properly constructed surface well in a selected situation may not prove to be one of the safest sources for water, because it can be inspected with perfect ease, and the fact of accidental leakage into it would become apparent. In this connection it may be well to describe in full detail the well which I have sunk in my garden at Andover, a garden which is rather handsomely manured with human excreta. The well is placed in the very centre of the garden (see fig. 10) at the intersection of two pathsa broad green path and a narrow asphalted path. This situation was chosen for two reasons: (1) that it was as far as possible removed from any accidental pollution from the sewer in the street; and (2) that in the centre of the garden it would theoretically run the greatest chance of fæcal contamination from the manure

used. As the well was sunk solely for experimental purposes this was essential. The garden is on a riverbank and very slightly raised above the level of the water. The well is only some 5 ft. deep, and the water stands at a level (which varies very slightly) of about 3 ft. 6 in. from the bottom. The well is lined throughout from the very bottom to a point some 15 in. above the ground with large concrete sewer-pipes 2 ft. 3 in. in diameter, and these pipes have been carefully cemented at their junctions. Outside the pipes a circle of cement concrete about 4 in. thick has been run in. It will thus be evident, the sides being perfectly protected, that no water can possibly enter this well except through the bottom, all contamination by lateral soakage through the walls being rendered impossible. The well is surrounded by an asphalte path about 3 ft. wide and slightly sloping away from it, and it is encircled by a clipped privet hedge about 5 ft. high, except at those points where the circle of privet is cut by the paths. There is a closely fitting cover of oak, which has an outer casing of lead, and thus all contamination from above is prevented. The water is drawn off through a 2-in. leaden pipe which passes through the outer concrete and the concrete lining pipe, the cut passage for the pipe being carefully closed with cement. The pump is behind the privet hedge, and is provided with a sink and waste pipe which takes the overflow some twenty or thirty yards to a neighbouring stream. In this way the constant dripping of water in the neighbourhood of the well is prevented; for I am very much alive to the dangers attending a constant water-drip, which might be able in time to worm its way through soil and concrete into the well itself. I regard this question of the overflow as one of great importance which is too often neglected. Figs. 10 and 11 show this