a board-room at the pumping-station and another at the farm, and should be allowed to deliberate in no other place. The humification of excrement in the presence of such an overpowering amount of water is impossible, and I believe that municipalities which are now busy diverting storm water will have to go further and deal with excreta, domestic slop-water, and manufacturers' effluents on different and separate systems. I confess I should like to see water-closets dealt with on an independent system by a vacuum principle such as is advocated by Shone and Liernur. Manufacturers' refuse, which is liable to contain chemicals and antiseptics, is so likely to kill the humus by poison as well as by drowning that it seems impossible to deal with it on any one system, and it is to be hoped that with the advance of chemistry it may be increasingly possible to turn manufacturing effluents to profitable account. It is now more than ten years ago since I first deliberately drew attention to the shortcomings of modern sanitary methods, and pointed out that the safe disposal of organic refuse was a question of which the biologist, rather than the engineer or chemist, would give us the solution. It is a hopeful sign of the times that engineers are now recognising this fact, thanks mainly to the teaching of the Board of Health in Massachusetts. The purification of sewage is wrought by the presence of living organisms on the filters; and for the due filtration of drinking-water it is now admitted that the filtering material must have a coating of living slime. These are facts which are now all but universally admitted. Our go-ahead municipalities, formed on democratic lines, are more ostentatious than the worst of Roman emperors. The London County Council wished at one time to give 750,000_l._ for a _site_ for its house! The central ideas of modern municipalism are the raising of loans and the sweating of the ratepayer. It must be remembered that there is no relation between magnificence and real efficiency. For example, in a town which I sometimes visit I am always interested by a stately pageant consisting of a huge conveyance weighing at least half a ton and looking like a cross between a railway truck and a hearse. This is drawn by a horse weighing 15 or 16 cwt., and this horse is guarded by two men weighing, perhaps, 12 st. apiece. Inside the hearse are eighteen huge pails weighing 40 lb. each, and inside the pails are the weekly excreta of ninety people, which should, if properly managed, certainly not weigh more than 200 lb. or 300 lb. In short, there are about 30 cwt. of gear for the removal of at most 3 cwt. of material. This cumbrous array works, it need hardly be said, at a funereal pace, and there can be no doubt that a lad with a hand-truck coming every day would do the work far more rapidly, efficiently, and cheaply.