Nor have I failed to study all “artificial” substitutes for the best means, wherever difficulties of obtaining suitable land presented themselves, e.g. my Canvey Island scheme for dealing with the sewage of London on a relatively small area, and other cases.
Of late years I have welcomed the light thrown on this subject by bacteriologists, but lamented extravagant statements put forward by those who fail to see that the previously unrecognised microbes can do their work, as they have always done it, to most advantage in the upper layers of any porous land.
1902.
An interim report by Lord Iddesleigh’s Royal Commission has, however, awakened such theorists to the fact that land is not to be discarded because it may not bring in a profit or because patentees of systems find it to their interest to contrast neglected or badly managed sewage farms with carefully nursed little experimental installations for artificial treatment of selected samples of sewage.
Recognising the marvellous improvements in arts and manufactures of all kinds due to steam, chemistry and electricity, the public has naturally expected similar results from applied science in artificial sewage treatment,
and there has been no lack of study of every imaginable process during the last thirty years.
1884. Lord Bramwell’s Royal Commission establishes principles.
But the late Lord Bramwell’s Royal Commission on Metropolitan Sewage Discharge established two very important points of general application, namely:—
1. The principle of separation in works of sewerage and drainage; and
2. The fact that the suspended matters in town sewage can be very effectually removed from its liquid by simple deposition without the aid of any chemical reagent.