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33
soft or river waters are better than the hard or chalk
well waters (softened by Clark's process) is yet a
question far from satisfactorily answered, or tested,
either by science or practice.
These problems are all intimately associated
with sanitary progress. As a rule, it is unsafe
to draw our water supplies for drinking purposes
from rivers until efficacious legislative enactments
shall have protected them from pollution; on the
other hand the utilization of sewage products by
irrigation, and scientific agriculture, is looked upon
as a sanitary necessity, threatening, as some persons
believe, the pollution of subsoil and surface water
running into streams and rivers. Hence it follows
that we may have to seek for our drinking water
from lakes and springs, where it has filtered over
primitive rocks, or through the slate, gravel, and
limestone strata, and is but slightly charged with
mineral matters in solution.
If it should ultimately be deemed impossible to
assure conditions of safety by employing water
of the Thames or its tributaries, then the gigantic
scheme of Mr. Hemans for bringing water from
the Cumberland lakes, or of Mr. Bateman for tapping
a lake in North Wales, and bringing it to
London by an aqueduct, 200 miles long, might be
seriously considered by rate-payers and engineers.
Meanwhile, I am inclined to believe that Thames
water may be collected, stored, filtered, aerated
and distributed in a condition equal to most spring
waters, and in sufficient quantity to meet the
growing wants of the population.
e