Experience in England has shown that if the whole cost of water supply and pipe sewers is, with its interest, divided over a period of thirty years,—so that at the end of that time it should all be repaid,—the annual charge would not be greater than the cost of keeping house-drains and cess-pools pools clean. The General Board of Health state that "the expense of cleansing the brick house-drains and cess-pools for four or five years, would pay the expense of properly constructed water-closets and pipe-drains, for the greater number of old premises." [Fig. 49 - MODERN HOUSE DRAINAGE AND SEWERAGE.] Fig. 49 - MODERN HOUSE DRAINAGE AND SEWERAGE. One of the reports of this body, which has added more than any other organization to the world’s knowledge on these subjects, closes with the following: "Conclusions obtained as to house drainage, and the sewerage and cleansing of the sites of towns." "That no population living amidst impurities, arising from the putrid emanations from cess-pools, drains and sewers of deposit, can be healthy or free from the attacks of devastating epidemics. "That as a primary condition of salubrity, no ordure and town refuse can be permitted to remain beneath or near habitations. "That by no means can remedial operations be so conveniently, economically, inoffensively, and quickly effected as by the removal of all such refuse dissolved or suspended in water. "That it has been subsequently proved by the operation of draining houses with tubular drains, in upwards of 19,000 cases, and by the trial of more than 200 miles of pipe sewers, that the practice of constructing large brick or stone sewers for general town drainage, which detain matters passing into them in suspension in water, which accumulate deposit, and which are made large enough for men to enter them, and remove the deposit by hand labor, without reference to the area to be drained, has been in ignorance, neglect or perversion of the above recited principles. "That while sewers so constructed are productive of great injury to the public health, by the diffusion into houses and streets of the noxious products of the decomposing matters contained in them, they are wasteful from the increased expense of their construction and repair, and from the cost of ineffectual efforts to keep them free from deposit. "That the house-drains, made as they have heretofore been, of absorbent brick or stone, besides detaining substances in suspension, accumulating foul deposit, and being so permeable as to permit the escape of the liquid and gaseous matters, are also false in principle and wasteful in the expense of construction, cleansing and repair. "That it results from the experience developed in these inquiries, that improved tubular house-drains and sewers of the proper sizes, inclinations, and material, detain and accumulate no deposit, emit no offensive smells, and require no additional supplies of water to keep them clear.