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to furnish to the City a largely increased and practically
inexhaustible supply.
The subject of water in its district relations ought
hardly to be passed without a word of caution as to
the use of pumps within the City. I need hardly
inform you that every spring of water represents
the drainage of a certain surface or thickness of
soil, and that—such as are the qualities of this
gathering-ground, such must be the qualities of the
water. You will, perhaps, remember that in my
account of one celebrated City pump, which sucks
from beneath a churchyard, I showed you ninety
grains of solid matter in every gallon of its water.
In virtue of that wonderful action which earth
exerts on organic matter, the former contents of a
coffin, here re-appearing in a spring, had undergone
so complete a change as to be insusceptible of further
putrefaction : the grateful coolness, so much admired
in the produce of that popular pump, chiefly
depending on a proportion of nitre, which has arisen
in the chemical transformation of human remains,
and which being dissolved in the water, gives it, I believe,
some refrigerant taste and slight diuretic action.
Undoubtedly this water is an objectionable beverage
in respect of its several saline ingredients; but my
present object in adverting to them is rather to
illustrate an anterior danger which they imply.
Their presence indicates a comparative completion
of the putrefactive process, effected by the uniform