Until the problem of “What to do with our sewage?” is settled, clearly, we ought to do our best to stop the growth of the evil. Our present system of sewers ought to be closed as far as permission to connect fresh houses is concerned. As it is, the new Council, like the old Board, will have an uncertain quantity of sewage to deal with, for old houses are being everywhere pulled down, and houses of greatly increased capacity erected, and this of course means a proportionate increase in the sewage to be disposed of. In the City there are but 50,000 inhabitants in the official sense, but there are by this time fully 300,000 daily workers and over 700,000 daily visitors to the City, so that, in spite of an official decrease in population, the increase of sewage from that particular spot must be enormous. The same class of facts applies to other districts in the metropolis, so that the evil at the outfall is not only not improving, but is increasing daily. It seems to me quite impossible to make any arrangement for adequately dealing with the sewage of a district, unless you are able to say beforehand what is the maximum quantity which will have to be dealt with. There being no adequate control of building in London, and no relation between the cubic contents of a building and the area it occupies (witness Queen Anne’s Mansions, the huge pile with which we are threatened at Knightsbridge, and the equally large pile projected in the Strand, which is to be 135 feet high, according to the newspapers), it is evident that the volume of sewage to be dealt with may be doubled or trebled without any increase of the area drained by the sewers. Under such conditions as these the sewage problem may well be insoluble. The first and main duty of any sanitary authority should be to exercise a wise control over building. If every house were compelled in the future to have a curtilage bearing a definite proportion to the cubic contents, there would be an end of these towers of Babel, which shut out from us the light and air of heaven; the price of building land would fall; it would be possible to make some calculations as to sewage; and the excessive overcrowding of a city would be prevented. Without such a regulation great sewage schemes must in the end make the sanitary condition of a city worse rather than better. What to do with our sewage is a very difficult problem--an insoluble problem, I believe, on the present lines. At present the Metropolitan Board is shipping some of the solid matter to be dropped into the sea at the mouth of the Thames. When the Thames Conservancy see this fine ship, “built in th’ eclipse, and rigged with curses dark,” bound on its mission of blocking the port of London, what can they think? They think it worth while, apparently, to have a man fined for throwing a basket of rubbish over one of the bridges.