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46
sented by the examiners employed by them, Messrs.
Crookes, Odling, and Tidy. These gentlemen have
collected and published, in a report addressed to the
President of the Local Government Board, the
results of their daily examinations of samples of the
water delivered during the year 1881 by the seven
companies drawing their supplies from the Thames
and the Lea. They say,—
"That taking the organic carbon as a trustworthy
index of the organic matter contained in the
water, the amount of organic matter present in the
water supplied to London is, as a rule—contrary to
popular, but not to scientific opinion—exceedingly
small, never exceeding the 1/1000 of a per cent.
"That the water supplied to the Metropolis is, as a
rule, efficiently filtered, and that the suspended matter
is almost entirely of the nature of clay and sand, and
on the worst days when the water was recorded as
turbid, averaged considerably less than one grain
per gallon.
"That the waters of the Thames and Lea are well
aerated, and contain in solution very nearly the full
quantity of free oxygen that it is possible for water
to dissolve: a fact of great importance as an evidence
of the absence of decomposing organic matter, in
other words, of the absence either of putrescent or
of putrescible matter.