clared as good, passable, bad, dangerous, bad but not dangerous, adulterated but not injurious, adulterated and injurious.

There are expert inspectors appointed by the municipality, whose duty it is to procure samples of all goods supposed to be adulterated or unfit for use and have them examined. The result of such examination is marked as above.

During the year 1884, 2725 samples bought by the experts were examined; in 1885, 3276 samples, and in 1886, 4133, of which last number 3003 were taken from the groceries and 1124 from the custom-house at the request of the importers, who wished to have the government stamp affixed as a guarantee of the good quality of the articles examined.

In 1886, 562 requests were made for examinations at the custom-house, and 30,309 pipes, 4842 half pipes, 53,796 quarter pipes, and 1592 one-eighth pipes of Spanish wine; 63,850 cases of Bordeaux, 4115 of Italian, 3122 of native, and 200 of Portuguese wine were examined.

HOUSE-DRAINS AND HEALTH.-It was a little more than five years ago that Dr. Frank Hastings Hamilton wrote for the Popular Science Monthly an article on sewer-gas, in which he vigorously arraigned science for its failure to keep pace with civilization in the disposal of household wastes. The effect of Dr. Hamilton's article was quite unprecedented. His forcible presentation of facts and theories so affected the popular mind as to create an almost universal distrust of sanitary science, and, even at the present time, the idea prevails that plumbing fixtures in our houses are always a source of danger. In magazines and newspapers the discussion has been from time to time renewed, and the same pessimistic views are almost invariably held that were first advanced by Dr. Hamilton.

It is a subject of vital interest now to determine if this unfortunate condition of things described as existing five years ago still continues. We should know the truth or falsity of the assertion that there has been in late years a retrograde movement, hygienically considered, in substituting housedrains and sewers for the old earth-vaults and cesspools. Can we have plumbing fixtures in our houses without danger to health, or must we make great concessions in comfort and

convenience for the sake of safety? The question has lost none of its interest since Dr. Hamilton called into question the trustworthiness of sanitary science. Let us examine the evidence upon which the indictments have been made.-From "Safety in House Drainage," by W. E. Hoyt, S. B., in the Popular Science Monthly for July.

THE QUESTION OF SEWAGE DISPOSAL IN

LONDON.

MR. CHARLES HANCOCK, F.S.S., who is one of the representatives of the Brompton Ward at the Kensington Vestry, and an active member of that body, has succeeded in again directing public attention to the important question of the disposal of the Metropolitan Sewage. He brought the subject before the Kensington Vestry early in May, and in consequence of the motion he then carried, he received a communication from the eminent sanitary engineer, Sir Robert Rawlinson, K.C.B., who, while condemning in the strongest terms the futility and costliness of attempting to purify sewage with chemicals, advocates the application of sewage to land; which, as Mr. Hancock points out, is in accordance with the express recommendation of Lord Bramwell's commission.

Mr. Hancock sent Sir Robert Rawlinson's letter to the Times, with some remarks of his own calling attention to the report on the subject, which Sir Henry Roscoe submitted to the Metropolitan Board of Works some months ago, but which the Board has treated as a secret document. The raising of this question led to the substance of the report referred to being communicated to the Manchester Guardian, and to the insertion of a letter in the Builder from Mr. Alexander Aird, an eminent English engineer, resident in Berlin.

"I may

In commenting on this letter, Mr. Hancock says: say that the effect of the recommendations come to by Lord Bramwell's Commission has been somewhat misrendered, seeing that they (the Commissioners) did not suggest irrigation at all, but what may be termed its antitype-namely, filtration through soil, together with the deposition of the solid flocculent matter (sludge) on the surface of low land before the liquid

is discharged into the river." And in support of this view he quotes the following statement from a German sanitary authority: "It is not to be denied that the towns (in Europe) that have adopted the irrigation principle, as contra-distinguished from chemical precipitation, are the towns which stand highest from a hygienic point of view."

Writing to our own columns under date of May 6th, Mr. Hancock says, and we regret we cannot give his remarks in extenso: "I submit, in conclusion, that the question of the disposal of the Metropolitan Sewage, which has been so conclusively handled by Sir Robert Rawlinson, is one of the most important in the whole range of Local Government administration. And to no parish, I would add, is the matter one of more vital consequence than to Chelsea, bordering as it does upon so long a stretch of the once "sweet and silver" Thames, the continued pollution of which is a source of danger to the public and of serious injury to the value of the residential property on the Chelsea embankment. It is earnestly to be hoped that the local authority of Chelsea and those of other parishes bordering on the Thames will press upon the Metropolitan Board of Works the necessity of treating the London sewage by application to land instead of by the expensive and in the main delusive method of chemical precipitation alone."-West Middlesex Advertiser.

PRACTICAL HINTS ON DISINFECTION.-From "Disease Germs and How to Combat Them," by Lucius Pitkin, in the Century for July, accompanied by a frontispiece portrait of Pasteur :

First. Corrosive sublimate (mercuric chloride), sulphate of copper, and chloride of lime are among our best disinfectants, the first two being poisonous. At wholesale drug houses in New York single pounds can be obtained, mercuric chloride costing seventy-five cents, the others ten cents a pound.

Second. A quarter of a pound of corrosive sublimate and a pound of sulphate of copper in one gallon of water makes a concentrated solution to keep in stock. We will refer to it as solution A."

Third. For the ordinary disinfecting solution add half a pint of "solution A" to a gallon of water. This, while costing

less than a cent and a half per gallon, is a good strength for general use. Use in about equal quantity in disinfecting choleraic or typhoid-fever excreta.

Fourth. A four per cent solution of good chloride of lime or a quarter pint of "solution A" to a gallon of water is used to wash wood-work floors and wooden furniture after fumigation and ventilation.

Fifth. For fumigating with sulphur, three to four pounds should be used to every thousand cubic feet air space. Burn

in an old tin basin floating in a tub of water; keep room closed twelve hours, to allow the fumes to penetrate all cracks. Then open a window from the outside and allow fumes to escape into air.

Sixth. Soak sheets, etc., in chloride of lime solution, wring out, and boil.

Seventh. Cesspools, etc., should be well covered on top with a mixture of chloride of lime with ten parts of dry sand.

Eighth. Isolate the patient in an upper room from which curtains, carpets, and stuffed furniture have been removed. Ninth. The solution of mercuric chloride must not be placed in metal vessels, since the mercury would plate them.

THE PANAMA CANAL.

RESULT OF THE RECENT EXPERT EXAMINATION OF THE SCHEME.

Engineering News of June 2d publishes an article on the "Actual Status of the Panama Canal," giving the results of a recent expert examination of the entire length of the canal, and accompanied by a progress profile, showing the amount of work done and undone to January 1st of the present year, both for the sea level and lock canal. The profile shows that the only work which is anywhere near completion is about eleven miles of dredging on the Atlantic end and about a mile at the Pacific end. On the remainder of the work the proportion done is very small in comparison with that undone.

The estimate given in connection with the profile shows a total of 34,081,000 cubic metres remaining, without allowing for the changes of river channels, Gamboa dam, etc., which

raises the aggregate to 51,000,000 cubic metres. The company had admitted 32,000,000 to 40,000,000 metres. At the highest rate yet reached, of 1,000,000 cubic metres per month, it is estimated that at least four years will be necessary to finish the canal, if there is no lack of money.

The total amount of cash actually expended up to the present date is $177,910,000, represented by $351,150,900 of securities. The amount necessary to be raised to complete the canal is estimated by the Engineering News at a minimum of $230,000,000, which would be represented by at least $500,000,000 of new securities.

The article declares that the progress profile makes it evident that not over one tenth of the work nor one twentieth of the money has yet been spent which would be required to open a sea level canal, which De Lesseps declared last November would be opened February 30th, 1890. Therefore we can only escape from the conclusion that the impossibility of completing a sea level canal has been known for three or four years at least by assuming colossal ignorance, either of which is equally fatal to their credibility in regard to the lock project. The worst feature of the progress profile, to those familiar with the proper conduct of public works, is not so much the small aggregate of work done, but the distribution of it in the damning evidence it bears that all has been done for theatrical effect, to facilitate "raising the wind" by producing an impression on the ignorant and unthinking, rather than to so conduct the work as to complete it in the least time, at the least cost. The worst feature of all is the "completed section" on the marshes, which should not have been touched at all until the heavy work was nearly done. The next worst is doing so much work where it is likely to be washed out by floods in the Chagres River, without first completing the costly and doubtful damming and diversions of that river, which are hardly yet begun.

The article is illustrated by views from different standpoints showing the enormity of the undertaking, profiles of the work during its progress, and the evident indirectness of purposeconsequent upon what now appears to have been insufficient comprehension at the outset. It is, in short, a cogent exposure of what now appears to be inevitable-the most gigantic failure of engineering enterprise ever undertaken.