Meanwhile, the complaints which reached the Committee of Health during the summer, together with the results of my own inspection, lead me to believe that the several small docks which lie along the City bank of the river from the Tower to the Temple, fulfil little really useful purpose; that they are to a great extent used as laystalls for their vicinage; that copious deposits and accumulations of filth take place in them; that they are a nuisance and injury, except to the very few who are interested in their maintenance; and that it would be of public advantage that they should be filled up. WATER-SUPPLY. II. I am sure that I do not exaggerate the sanitary importance of water, when I affirm that its unrestricted supply is the first essential of decency, of comfort, and of health; that no civilization of the poorer classes can exist without it; and that any limitation to its use in the metropolis is a barrier, which must maintain thousands in a state of the most unwholesome filth and degradation. In the City of London the supply of water is but a fraction of what it should be. Thousands of the population have no supply of it to the houses where they dwell. For their possession of this first necessary of social life, such persons wholly depend on their power of attending at some fixed hour of the day, pail in hand, beside the nearest stand-cock; where, with their neighbours, they wait their turn--sometimes not without a struggle, during the tedious dribbling of a single small pipe. Sometimes there is a partial improvement on this plan; a group of houses will have a butt or cistern for the common use of some scores of inmates, who thus are saved the necessity of waiting at a standcock, but who still remain most insufficiently supplied with water. Next in the scale of improvement we find water-pipes laid on to the houses; but the water is turned on only for a few hours in the week, so that all who care to be adequately supplied with it must be provided with very spacious receptacles. Receptacles are sometimes provided: and in these, which are often of the most objectionable description, water is retained for the purposes of diet and washing, during a period which varies from twenty-four to seventy-two hours. One of the most important purposes of a water-supply seems almost wholly abandoned--that, namely, of having a large quantity daily devoted to cleanse and clear the house-drains and sewers; and in many cases where a waste-pipe has been conducted from the water-butt to the privy, the arrangement is one which gives to the drainage little advantage of water, while it communicates to the water a well-marked flavour of drainage.