Of course it is practicable to plug the pipe at the bottom and to fill it with water to ascertain if it is water-tight; but all that is only a device to retain a thing which ought to be altered. Soil pipes ought always to be ventilated by a pipe as large as the soil pipe carried up above the roof. The soil pipes ought to be outside the house, and connected with the drain by plain stoneware bends, or, under certain circumstances, disconnected from the drains themselves by a trap with an open grating. Such a trap is called a disconnecting trap. _Bath-room._--The first thing to mention in connection with the bath-room is that the inlet and outlet openings for the water should not be the same. Very frequently in a bath the water goes out by the same apertures as it comes in. This is a bad plan, for some of the dirty water comes back with the clean. The waste pipe should be treated in the same way as the waste pipe of a sink. Frequently on the best bedroom floor there is a water-closet actually in one of the bedrooms, or opening directly out of it by a door. This ought not to be countenanced under any circumstances whatever. On the drawing-room floor there is generally a balcony, the pipes from which go very frequently straight down to the drain, or they are connected with rain-water pipes from the top of the house, which _themselves_ discharge into the drain; so that these pipes from balconies and lead flats are not at all infrequently connected with the drains. _Bell-wire Pipes._--There is sometimes an unaccountable smell in the drawing-room, and people puzzle themselves in all kinds of ways to account for it. It is generally noticed when people are sitting in a particular chair--which particular chair is a chair possibly most frequently sat in--one near to the fireplace. The smell noticed is a smell which comes up the tube that the bell-wire goes down. The bell-wire goes down into the basement. It may go into some part of the basement which is not very savoury, and foul air may be, and frequently is, taken up into the drawing-room or best bed-room. Or the wire may be in the basement passage close to the gas-light, and the products of combustion of the gas may pass up the wire-tube into the drawing-room or bedroom.