Where a cesspool is located at a distance from a dwelling and there is opportunity to lead a vent pipe up the side of a shed, barn, or any stable object it is advisable to do so for purposes of ventilation. Where the conditions are less favorable it may be best, because of the odor, to omit any direct vent pipe from the cesspool and rely for ventilation on the house sewer and main soil stack extending above the roof of the house. Cesspools should be emptied and cleaned at least once a year and the contents given safe burial or, with the requisite permission, wasted in some municipal sewerage system. After cleaning, the walls and bottom may be treated with a disinfectant or a deodorant. SEPTIC TANKS A tight, underground septic tank with shallow distribution of the effluent in porous soil generally is the safest and least troublesome method of treating sewage upon the farm, while at the same time more or less of the irrigating and manurial value of the sewage may be realized. The late Professor Kinnicutt used to say that a septic tank is "simply a cesspool, regulated and controlled." The reactions described under the captions "How sewage decomposes" and "Cesspools" take place in septic tanks. In all sewage tanks, whatever their size and shape, a portion of the solid matter, especially if the sewage contains much grease, floats as scum on the liquid, the heavier solids settle to form sludge, while finely divided solids and matter in a state of emulsion are held in suspension. If the sludge is retained in the bottom of the tank and converted or partly converted into liquids and gases, the tank is called a septic tank and the process is known as septicization. The process is sometimes spoken of as one of digestion or rotting. =History.=--Prototypes of the septic tank were known in Europe nearly 50 years ago. Between 1876 and 1393 a number of closed tanks with submerged inlets and outlets embodying the principle of storage of sewage and liquefaction of the solids were built in the United States and Canada. It was later seen that many of the early claims for the septic process were extravagant. In recent years septic tanks have been used mainly in small installations, or, where employed in large installations, the form has been modified to secure digestion of the sludge in a separate compartment, thus in a measure obviating disadvantages that exist where septicization takes place in the presence of the entering fresh sewage. =Purposes.=--The purposes of a septic tank are to receive all the farm sewage, as defined on page 1, hold it in a quiet state for a time, thus causing partial settlement of the solids, and by nature's processes of decomposition insure, as fully as may be, the destruction of the organic matter.