A second agricultural establishment at Achères, farther on, on both sides of the Seine, was inaugurated in 1895, the larger portion of which is held by individuals, but as each hectare of land can absorb not more than forty thousand cubic mètres annually, it has been found necessary to seek additional _champs d'épuration_. These have been secured by the municipality at Méry and les Gresillons and in their neighborhood, still farther westward, and the completion of these is promised for the summer of 1899. In the model garden of Asnières, all varieties of culture are practised, the sewage is carried in trenches into the cultivated land in such a manner as to bathe only the roots of the plants. The extremely winding course taken by the Seine west of Paris renders it necessary for the conduits conveying this drainage to cross the river three times before reaching Achères, as may be seen by reference to the map. From the _usine elévatoire_ of Clichy it is carried under the Seine by a siphon, four hundred and sixty-three mètres in length; the aqueduct crosses the river again near the usine de Colombes, opposite Argenteuil, on a steel bridge, and again near Herblay, by another siphon. In 1897, on the total surface, a thousand hectares, under cultivation, there were spread seventy million cubic mètres of sewage. After many and long debates, carried on both in the Conseil Municipal and the Chamber of Deputies, the much-discussed question of _Tout à l'égout_ was disposed of by a law passed on the 10th of July, 1894, by which the proprietors of all houses situated in streets provided with a public sewer were required to make connections with this and drain into it all the refuse of their _cabinets d'aisances_. This connection was to be made within the space of three years, and a proportionate tax for this privilege was laid upon each dwelling. But the streets in which there are no public sewers,--including those private streets, _impasses_, and _cités_ which the municipality considers as the property of individuals, and for which it provides neither policemen nor street-cleaners,--and those buildings in which this connection has not been made, still furnish occupation for those nocturnal vehicles the mere thought of which drives the careful citizen to close his windows. In the seventeenth century, this nocturnal agent was known as _Maître fy-fy et des basses-œuvres_, and he fulfilled his task by carting his material to one of the public dumping grounds and there discharging it. Many of the now picturesque sites of the city owe their characteristics to these eminences of refuse,--the Buttes of the Rues Meslay and Notre-Dame-de-Nazareth, Bonne-Nouvelle, des Moulins, the labyrinth of the Jardin des Plantes. "The _voirie_ of Montfaucon," says M. Strauss, "with its infected basins, its pestilential reservoirs, its charnier and its gibbet, was a cause of shame and anxiety to several quarters of