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sewage question; so that the investigations came to a close. Sir
Henry Roscoe's Reports, meanwhile, are on record, and the
scientific information they embody will be of value in any future
inquiry. It remains to be seen what will be the effect upon the
river of the costly scheme of subsiding reservoirs, and of the
deodorization of the sewage, now partially in operation, which the
Council are carrying out, although the defunct Board is exclusively
responsible for the experiment; an experiment on a vast scale, made,
it may be repeated, in opposition to the recommendations of the
Royal Commission generally opposed by scientific chemists, and
condemned by their own chosen adviser. The amount of sewage
dealt with last year at the precipitation works at the northern outfal
at Barking (those at the southern outfall at Crossness are incomplete)
was over 111,000,000 tons. Speaking of the effect, the
Chairman of the Council, in his annual address, stated that there
was "a marked improvement in the foreshore there, which was
until lately covered with black foetid mud, but which is now
gradually returning to its normal condition of a gravelly
foreshore, on which green algae are beginning to re-appear,
and will themselves contribute to the purification of the
water." Against this statement, there has to be set the
complaint of at least one Sanitary Authority, that the condition
of the river above the works (and of course above the
Crossness outfall, where mostly untreated sewage is discharged) is
as bad or worse than ever this year—notwithstanding tbe coldness
and wetness of the season—and that the black and foetid condition
of the water is observable to even a higher point than in former
years. The Chairman of the Council added that he had "every
reason to believe" that when the Crossness works on the south
side are also in operation, there will be a "still further improvement
in the condition of the river." The Main Drainage
Committee, in their Annual Report, state that "including 11,728
tons, the weight of chemicals," the quantity of sludge obtained in
1890 from the 111,505,000 tons of sewage, was 421,500 tons, of
92 per cent. moisture, and that the cost of lime used was £6774,
that of iron being £2641. The quantity of sludge taken out to