CARTS. -------------+--------+----------+----------+------------+---------- | |Travelling|Travelling| | |Filling.| Full. | Empty. |Waiting, &c.|Spreading. -------------+--------+----------+----------+------------+---------- | H. M. | H. M. | H. M. | H. M. | H. M. Paddington | 1 45 | 2 9 | 1 58 | 0 20 | 1 30 St. Saviour’s| 1 29 | 2 16 | 2 4 | 0 26 | 1 29 Strand | 1 11 | 2 30 | 2 18 | 0 17 | 1 3 Kensington | 4 40 | 2 2 | 1 57 | 0 0 | 1 54 Chelsea | 2 44 | 1 15 | 2 14 | 0 35 | 1 6 -------------+--------+----------+----------+------------+---------- VANS. -------------+--------+----------+----------+------------+---------- Paddington | 3 33 | 1 9 | 1 3 | 0 0 | 3 0 St. Saviour’s| 2 20 | 1 4 | 1 21 | 0 23 | 2 58 Strand | 2 30 | 1 25 | 1 14 | 0 20 | 2 23 -------------+--------+----------+----------+------------+---------- In the year 1856, Mr. Scott, C.E., the Chief Surveyor of the parish of St. Pancras, kept an account of the daily round of an ordinary water cart, when he found that through an average working day of 10¹⁄₄ hours, exclusive of the breakfast and dinner hours, the cart took one hour and twenty minutes filling, fifty minutes only in distributing the water on the roads, and eight hours and seven minutes in travelling to spread the water and back to the stand posts. It was obvious that these were placed too far apart, and by the subsequent introduction of additional standposts Mr. Scott found, in the year 1867, that the filling occupied two hours, the distribution one hour and thirty minutes, and the travelling to and fro six hours and thirty minutes; so that it may be assumed, with an ordinary two-wheeled water cart, that two-thirds of the day is spent in travelling, one fifth in filling, and about one-seventh in the actual spreading. But a watch should be kept upon the man who is engaged in this work, otherwise he will idle away his time and the streets remain unwatered. A good check upon this is Mr. Bayley’s Tell-Tale, which registers automatically on a dial at the side of the van the number of rounds a man goes each day. Watering the streets with sea water should be adopted whenever it is feasible, as it not only gives a delightful freshness to the air and dispels iodine, but it also causes the surface of the street to maintain its humidity for a longer period than when fresh water is used, as it impregnates the soil with hygrometric matter. This has been often attempted artificially, by adding common salt to the water used for watering, but it is rather too expensive for the benefit derived.[172]