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61
WATER-SUPPLY.
rain-fall of one district, while softness is preserved
for that of another.
But there are other evils belonging to these
waters, less appreciable indeed by chemistry, but
open to universal observation, and meriting unqualified
blame. They are conducted to the metropolis
in open channels; they receive in large measure the
surface-washing, the drainage, and even the sewage
of the country through which they pass; they derive
casual impurities from bathers and barges;
they are liable to whatever pollutions mischievous
or filthy persons may choose to inflict on them; and
then on their arrival in the metropolis (after a short
subsidence in reservoirs, which themselves are not
unobjectionable) are distributed, without filtration,
to the public. Whatever chemistry may say on this
subject (and I need not remind you of very powerful
causes of disease which lie beyond its cognisance)
I cannot consider it matter of indifference,
that we drink—with whatever dilution, or with
whatever imperfect oxidation, the excremental and
other impurities which mingle in these sources of
our supply. Such admixtures, though in their quantity
less, are in their quality identical with those
which render Thames-water, as taken at London
Bridge, inadmissible for domestic consumption, and
which occasion it, when stored for sea-use, to undergo,
before it becomes fit to drink, a succession
of offensive changes strictly comparable to putrefaction.