The valve closet, which we often find upstairs in old houses instead of the pan closet, has no large iron container under the seat, but it has a water-tight valve under the basin, and so requires a small valve-box; so that there is no great collection of foul air immediately under the basin of the closet. The valve closet, however, has a disadvantage in that it requires an overflow pipe; because the valve is water-tight, and if servants throw slops into it, or the supply pipe to it leaks, the water goes on running and the basin fills, and, if there were no overflow pipe, it would overflow on to the floor; so that probably the pan closet ousted the valve closet because it was found that people could go on throwing in any amount of slops and using it in the roughest manner without getting their ceilings damaged. However, the valve closets, as they were originally made, generally had overflow pipes which went into part of the apparatus below. Occasionally these overflow pipes are connected with soil pipes or the trap of the closet below, but these are exceptional instances. One of the water-closets in the basement is very frequently in an exceedingly improper position--either in the scullery or actually in the kitchen. These w.c.’s ought all to be outside the house. If closets are in the middle of the house they ought to be done away with, and should be put against an outside wall. This might be done by sacrificing a bit of some room which can be spared, or by converting some small bedroom into a bath-room and closet, or still better, by making a sort of tower outside the house. The merits and demerits of the various kinds of water-closet were discussed in a paper by Emptage before the Congress of the Sanitary Institute at Glasgow. To be rightly considered wholesome and adapted for general use, a closet should, in Emptage’s opinion, possess the following qualifications:-- 1st. The water seal of its trap should be in sight, should stand up in the basin, and be quite safe from either momentum or siphonage. 2nd. It should be so thoroughly flushed that at each discharge every part of the basin and trap would be properly cleansed. 3rd. It should be as well adapted for the discharge of slops as for a w.c. A closet possessing these advantages is perfectly safe to use anywhere, and the only kind which, in his opinion, comes up to this standard, is that known as the “direct action.” Within the last few years several inventors have turned their attention to the manufacture of this kind of closet, and there are now several in the market to choose from, each of which has some advantage peculiar to itself. Emptage has found: 1st. That these closets, when properly trapped, flushed, and ventilated, are perfectly safe and wholesome, and are free from the evils and annoyances attendant upon most other forms. 2nd. That to ensure a thorough flush out, the water must fall with an avalanche-like action direct upon the surface of the water in the basin.