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Kent Company's water ; this comparative freedom from saline matters
being attained by adding a small quantity of slaked lime to the water
before it leaves the Company's works. All the water supplied to the
Metropolis would be improved by being submitted to the same (Clark's)
process.
The organic impurities found in the river waters, derive their importance, as
already intimated, from being chiefly of animal origin. Last year the
amount of organic matter was exceptionally small. Owing to the careful
filtration to which the river water is now subjected, together with the
improved means of storage at the command of the Companies, it being
no longer necessary to impound the worst flood waters, and to the action
of the conservators, the average quality of the water supplied has
become better year by year, and more uniform throughout the year. The
river Lea water was better last year than that drawn from the Thames.
Of Thames derived waters, the Chelsea Company supplied the best, the
West Middlesex Company the worst, a strange reversal of former
experiences. Deep.well waters undergo such a prolonged, exhaustive,
and inimitable natural filtration through great thicknesses of porous
strata, as to render it extremely unlikely that any suspended organic
matter known to be prejudicial to health, should have escaped removal.
Hence these waters are "uniformly pure and wholesome."
The following table exhibits the proportional amounts of organic elements,
(organic carbon and organic nitrogen), in the waters of the Companies
which supplv Kensington, the Kent Company's water being used as

Dr. Frankland states that the water drawn from the Thames was of better
average quality than in any previous year, excepting 1870, since his analyses
were first made in 1875. But he adds that with the proportion of organic
matter at its minimum, there is no certainty that the water does not contain
the germs of zymotic disease, there being no guarantee against such
morbific matters gaining access to the river, and there being nothing in
the subsequent treatment to which the river water is subjected by the
Companies that will ensure the removal of matters of this description.
He is informed that, on this account, several of the Companies themselves
are now impressed with the necessity of ultimately abandoning the
rivers Thames and Lea as sources of water supply, and some of them
have already completed works for utilizing subterranean waters which
have undergone natural filtration through great thicknesses of gravel and