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65
WATER-SUPPLY.
recommended: the clearness and softness of these
waters, together with their freedom from organic
matters, having concurred to suggest their employment.
I feel bound to express the strongest opinion
against the fitness of these waters for the purpose
of beverage. They uniformly contain a considerable
proportion of medicinal ingredients; they are
capable of exerting definite and demonstrable influence
over the natural actions of the body; and
information is before me of various injury to health,
affecting large numbers of persons, arising from the
continued dietetic use of such waters.
In addressing your Honourable Court on the subject
of Water-supply for the City, it is impossible
that I should do otherwise than advert to the fact,
that, during the last few months, under the auspices
of Her Majesty's government, as represented for
sanitary purposes by the General Board of Health,
a plan has been gradually maturing itself, for the
supply of the entire metropolis with pure soft water.
Founding itself on very extensive investigations as
to the qualities of water, as to the influence of soils
on its chemical composition, as to the relation between
streams and rain-fall, as to the hydraulic principles
of distribution, and the like, this plan proposes
to gather water in certain silicious soils, which
can impart to it the least possible admixture of foreign
ingredients; to conduct it in closed channels,
with every precaution for its perfect purity; and to
distribute it throughout the metropolis, at a rate