Another great drawback to the water-carriage system of sewage is the increasing difficulty with regard to water supply. Our needs per head per diem in the matter of water have gradually increased to something like forty gallons, which many experts consider to be none too much. In London the air is so foul that rain-water is valueless for domestic use, and the water of the surface wells is too poisonous to drink, because we have neglected what I believe to be the most important of the principles of sanitation, viz. the keeping of organic refuse, whether solid or liquid, on the surface. The humus is the most perfect purifier and the best of filters, in virtue of its physical conditions and the life that is in it. We deliberately take our filth to the under side of the filter, and then complain because our surface wells are foul. The water companies are masters of the situation. Water is not paid for, as a rule, in proportion to the quantity used, because Parliament in its wisdom has decided that thriftiness in the use of water is wicked. The grossly overburdened ratepayer is now pricking up his ears to listen to the prattle about Welsh water schemes at the cost of 38,000,000_l._, and is congratulating himself that he is only a leaseholder, and that his bondage is terminable in seven, fourteen, or twenty-one years at most. Water carriage, in which the carrier is some sixty times more heavy and twenty times more bulky than the thing to be carried, is economically ridiculous (except in places where Nature has provided enormous quantities of water), and involves everyplace where it is tried in ruinous debt. Let us take an illustration. A suburban district having 27,000 persons on 7,000 acres of land, or a population of less than four to the acre, mainly engaged in market gardening, has in the last ten years borrowed 106,442_l._ for sewerage works. The only visible result to the inhabitants is that even country roads, with houses at ¼-mile or ½-mile intervals, have been dotted with foul-smelling manholes. In 1894-5 the sum of 18,534_l._ 14_s._ 1_d._ was raised from rates, and of this there was spent 6,518_l._ 13_s._ 10_d._ for interest and repayment of sewerage loans, and 2,542_l._ 3_s._ 11_d._ for current expenses in connection with sewage. If to this be added one-third of the establishment charges (say 700_l._), we reach a total of 9,860_l._, or more than half the sum received from rates. The provision and maintenance of all the patent domestic gimcracks which water carriage involves, together with the necessarily increased bills for water paid by the householder, would probably double that sum, and we shall not be far wrong in saying that these 27,000 persons are spending 20,000_l._ a year for the purpose of throwing their capital into the Thames.