within forty-eight hours after slaughtering, and every hide of a glandered or farcied horse, mule, or ass to be disinfected before removal.

9. The occupier shall remove, or cause to be removed from the premises, every carcase, bone, hide, skin, and all meat, fat, offal, blood, garbage, and other articles before the same have become putrid or offensive.

10. In case of any horse or other such animal as above-mentioned that is affected with either an infectious or contagious disease being brought to the premises of a Knacker, he shall not suffer it to be removed, but shall forthwith give information thereof to the Board, and to the Cattle Inspector for the District, appointed under the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act, 1869, with all details in his knowledge as to the name and address of the person bringing the horse or animal, and the owner and the place from which the same was brought, and the time when it was brought.

11. The occupier shall allow every Member of the Board, in addition to all other persons lawfully entitled to admission, to have free access to the premises during the times of slaughter, and at all reasonable hours.

12. The occupier, if he neglect or omit to observe or perform or shall in any way break any one of the above Bye-Laws, shall be subject to a penalty of the sum of £3, and in the case of a continuing offence the sum of £1 for every day during which such offence is continued after a conviction for the first offence.

13. Every court of Summary Jurisdiction, as defined by the Slaughterhouses, &c.. (Metropolis), Act, 1874, having jurisdiction to hear and decide complaints of the breach of the above Bye-Laws, may, by Summary Order, suspend or deprive any Knacker altogether of the right of carrying on any such business, as a penalty for the breach of any one of the above Bye-Laws.

As to the Structure of the Premises upon which the Business of a Knacker is carried on.

14. The occupier shall cause the slaughterhouse to be provided with an adequate tank or other proper receptacle for water and water supply, and so placed that the bottom thereof shall not be less than six feet above the level of the floor; and shall cause the slaughterhouse to be well and thoroughly ventilated.

15. The occupier shall cause the slaughterhouse to be well paved with asphalte, or flag stone, or proper paving bricks, set in cement, to be laid with proper slope and channel towards a gully, and to be effectually drained by an adequate drain of glazed pipes or in other sufficient manner communicating with the public sewer, and the gully to be trapped by an appropriate trap, and to be covered with a grating, the bars of which shall not be more than three-eighths of an inch apart.

16. The occupier shall cause every inner wall of the slaughterhouse to be covered with hard, smooth, impervious material, to the height of four feet at the least, and to be always kept in good order and repair.

17. The occupier shall cause all needful works and repairs to the premises to be forthwith done and executed as and when the same shall become requisite ; and shall not allow any alteration whatsoever to be made in respect of the paving, drainage, ventilation, or water supply to or in the premises which have been licensed, without the consent of this Board.

18. The occupier, if he neglect or omit to observe or perform, or shall in any way break any one of the Bye-Laws, as to the structure of the premises, shall be subject to a penalty of the sum of £5, and in the case of a continuing offence, the sum of £1 for every day during which such offence is continued after a conviction for the first offence.

CHAPTER XXI.

EFFLUVIUM NUISANCES CONNECTED WITH TRADES.

(188) Classification of Effluvium Nuisances.1

THE most offensive nuisances, says Ballard, are those which are given off from trade processes in which the materials used consist mainly of animal matters, or which contain elements of animal origin. The most disgusting of all are the effluvia from the process of gut-scraping and the preparation of sausage skins and catgut, the preparation of artificial manures from "scutch" (refuse matters in the manufacture of glue), the manufacture of some other kinds of artificial manures, and the melting of some kinds of fat. Manufacturing businesses which deal with vegetable substances are often very offensive, but only rarely can be said to give rise to distinct effluvia.

Among the most offensive are those in which the effluvia are thrown off during the heating of vegetable oils, as, for example, during the boiling of linseed oil, the manufacture of palmitic acid from cotton oil foots, from palm oil, the manufacture of some kinds of varnish, the drying of fabrics coated with such varnishes, and the burning of painted articles, such as disused meat tins. Among the trades which deal with neither animal nor vegetable substances the most offensive effluvia are produced from the manufacture of ammonium sulphate or ammonium chloride, and some other processes or manufacture in which the copious evolution of SH, occurs, and from gas making and the distillation of tar.

2

1 In this chapter much use is made of Dr. Ballard's exhaustive report on effluvium nuisances in Supplemental Reports of Local Government Board, 1876, 1877.

Dr. Ballard classifies effluvium nuisances as follows:

(1) The keeping of animals.

(2) The slaughtering of animals [see ante, chap. xx. p. 263].

(3) Other branches of industry, in which animal matters or substances of animal origin are principally dealt with.

(4) Branches of industry in which vegetable matters are principally dealt with.

(5) Branches of industry in which mineral substances are principally dealt with.

(6) Branches of mixed origin in which mineral, vegetable, and animal substances are dealt with.

(189) Pig-keeping.

It is specially stated by the Public Health Act that pigs must not be kept in towns so as to be a nuisance (sec. 47). The sources of offence are chiefly :-The "wash," or other offensive food; the

excreta.

It seems to be a popular prejudice that no substance is too nasty or repulsive to throw to pigs, hence the horribly fœtid putrefying liquid, the waste of the kitchen known as "wash," now so largely used. As however with other animals, cleanliness of food tends to health; the pig thrives most and produces the healthiest flesh when nourished on cleanly, wholesome food. The species of feeding most to be condemned is however that practised by many butchers, viz. giving to the pig the uncooked débris and blood of the slaughter-house; it is in this way that pork is so liable to be contaminated with tubercle and parasites.

The excreta of the pig are peculiarly offensive; there is no more penetrating stink than that evolved in cleaning out a pigstye. If pigs are to be kept at all in towns it must be under stringent regulations, one of which may well be a thorough daily cleansing of the stye and removal of the manure in proper closed receptacles either at night or early in the morning. Dr. Ballard points out that all the pachydermata roll in the mud in order to get rid of the irritating effete epidermis. The mud cakes on the skin and when dry falls off, carrying with it the cutaneous débris. If a pig is well scrubbed with water, he does not wallow in his own manure, so that in this way the animals themselves may be kept in a fairly cleanly state.

(190) Bacon Curing.

The singeing of the hair of the pig, which is one of the first operations, may cause an unpleasant smell, especially if this is done in the open, and not underneath a hood adapted to lead the fumes into a shaft. Much of the American pork is converted into bacon. It is first soaked in water to remove salt; it is then rapidly dried in a closed chamber by the heat of a central coke fire; the windows of the chamber are then opened and the bacon exposed to a current of fresh air. In one case quoted by Dr. Ballard, observed by Dr. Spear, the process was conducted in South Shields in an unventilated cellar beneath an inhabited room, the inhabitants of which complained bitterly of the smell of the steam which entered their room through the loosely-boarded floor. In Liverpool, nuisance has also been caused from this business by the discharge of warm water into the drains from the washing of the pork, the effluvia bursting up through the gullies.

(191) Nuisance from Stables (Horse Keeping).

The sources of nuisance are

(1) Soakage of urine into the ground from imperfect paving. (2) Emanations from the dung.

(3) Impurity of the atmosphere due to cutaneous and lung exhalations of the animals kept therein.

A country stable, a reasonable distance from human habitation, is not likely to be complained of, although against the interests of the horses it may be ill-ventilated, ill-kept, and the manure only dealt with at long intervals. The keeping of stables and mews in order is a daily care to the sanitary authorities of large towns, the more especially when the floor above is used as a habitation.

In the metropolis there are many thousands of persons living over stables and constantly breathing an atmosphere impregnated with ammonia. There are no reliable statistics on the subject, but such conditions cannot be conducive to high vigorous health. Stables should of course have a perfectly impervious floor, and the drains should be well laid and of good materials. There should also be no difficulty in making the floors of the living rooms above stables of impervious material, and I think a sanitary authority would be justified on complaint of nuisance owing to stable

T

emanations rising through a pervious floor, in giving notice to remedy the nuisance.

1 have found in several instances that the drinking water stored in a cistern within stables has been so impregnated with ammonia as to actually smell and taste of that substance. Hence it is important to notice the position of the cistern, and to insist that it shall have a proper cover.

The nuisance from dung is mainly in its removal, when it has been previously stored in heaps. The heap is liable to ferment, and then when disturbed gives off watery vapour charged with a peculiarly strong-smelling ammonia. The method adopted in some large stables is to each morning put the dung direct into a cart and thus avoid making a heap at all. In any case dung-pits are unmitigated nuisances in towns and should be discountenanced. A cage of iron bars at or near the door of each stable is about the neatest and most unobjectionable form of storage receptacle, the free admission of air preventing fermentation. Ammoniacal emanations, and consequently loss of a valuable fertilizing agent, may be controlled by wetting the manure with dilute sulphuric acid; its commercial value in this way is certainly increased.

(192) Cow Keeping.-Dairies.

As in the case of keeping horses so in the case of cow keeping, the question of nuisance mainly arises in towns.

The sources of nuisance from the keeping of cows are(1) Impurity of the atmosphere in and around the shed. (2) Emanations from the dung of the animals.

(3) The storing of grains.

Cow-sheds are seldom adequately ventilated, for the cow-keeper knows by experience that unless he keeps the shed warm the cows do not secrete so much milk. To transform the cow into a milkproducing machine the animal must be kept in-doors, fed highly, and kept at a temperature of from 65° to 75°. Hence the health officer will find all proposals to sweeten the atmosphere by free ventilation looked at with much disfavour. The cow passes daily an immense quantity of semiliquid manure and a large quantity of urine; there is also atmospheric contamination from the lungs, and it is to be remembered that in addition to carbon dioxide, the