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21
The water on examination in bulk, i.e. in a glass tube two feet
in length, is almost colorless, perfectly free from all turbidity,
as well as from living organisms of every kind. I have had occasion
of late to examine with the utmost care the water of the New
River Company, and it affords me pleasure to speak of the
great care taken both in the preservation of the river and the filtration
of the water.
I should naturally be led here to speak of what has been so
frequently a subject-matter of debate, viz.: the desirability of a
constant water supply. But this is now rendered unnecessary by
the fact that the water companies have at length yielded to the
popular clamor and granted the constant service. That this will
be an enormous gain in the case of the courts and crowded homes
of the poor there can be no second opinion. But I must confess,
that to the well-to-do classes, with the present daily supply (Sundays
not excepted), a supply little short of constant, I have yet to be convinced
that the constant service is so great a boon or so desirable as
some seem to regard it. However, this is not a matter for discussion
now, because as I said the popular cry has been yielded to.
And now a complaint of a different character reaches us, that the
conditions required by the companies in granting the constant
supply are unfair. To me their most manifest fault is their indefinite
character. One certainly could have wished that the companies
(who were better judges than anybody else) would have decided
on some special form of apparatus to recommend for the
adoption of the public, rather than leave them to choose and shift
for themselves, floundering about amongst the numerous patents of
almost daily creation. These I know very well are in many cases
absolutely worthless. Thus a new expense is incurred for further
changes of fittings that might just as well have been advised in the
first instance. But the complaint we hear is one of a deeper
character than this. The public no doubt imagined when, in the
first instance, they loudly asked for a constant supply, that " constant
supply "meant" unlimited waste." To one with even a mere
chance knowledge of the important question of the water supply
to London, a work, be it remembered, of gigantic magnitude, and
what is more, a work of daily increasing magnitude, it will be seen
that this never could be permitted. And hence the water companies
have drawn up a series of regulations in accordance with