A considerable portion of the ground, composing the south and south-eastern parts of Paddington, consists of sand and gravel; the northern and north-western parts being clay. Vast quantities of the former have been removed; and although the Paddington soil was sufficiently “factitious” at the time Lysons wrote, it has become much more so since that time. Those only who have carefully watched the modes which have been adopted to raise the ground for making new roads, and for elevating the basement of houses in certain parts of this parish, can form any idea of the immense quantity of “rubbish” which has been “shot here.” As to the nature of a great deal of that rubbish, I will not offend my readers by attempting any description. Suffice it to say, that thousands of loads of sand and gravel have been taken away since the Act passed which permitted the sale of this natural soil, and vegetable and animal matters of all kinds, and in all stages of putrefaction, have been emptied into hollow places. Besides the effect produced by the poisonous gases which must arise from such factitious soil, other bad effects frequently follow the removal of the natural earth and the substitution of made ground. All the house-drains which are laid on the latter, sink, and in a short time become either partially, or wholly, useless for the purpose for which they were made; and new drains, constructed at great expence and inconvenience, are necessary. When from this or any other cause, the drain does not empty itself into the common sewer, it is emphatically termed by the men who work in the sewers, “a dead’un.” Having for several years lived in a house which owned one of these dead drains, and having been very nearly “a dead’un” myself in consequence, I was led to enquire into this subject somewhat minutely; and although the drainage of an immense city is too important a subject to be treated of by the topographer in a sketch of a single parish, yet I cannot refrain from saying a word or two in this place on a point of such vital consequence. The Thames having been most mischievously used as the great common sewer for London and its neighbourhood; and Paddington which is so much above its level, having been drained into it, one would have imagined that the system of drainage here would have completely removed all debris from so elevated a spot. Such, however, has not been the case, as I have learned from the Reports of the Sewer Commissioners, and from a personal inspection of some of the sewers. Nothing worthy the name of a system of drainage, can be secured, till the great river, which was intended by its Creator to bring health and life to the people, instead of being made by man the instrument of his own disease and death, is freed from the sewerage of a whole metropolis: yet much good may be done in the mean time, and at a comparatively small outlay.