all the world, including the manufacturers and the Local Authorities, wish us well. Secure, they say, the purity of the rivers, restore the salmon, succeed in your noble endeavours, but do not harass any man. 'Nous sommes tous prêts à donner la vie, vous la mienne, moi la vôtre.' Excuses for inaction, all the dilatory pleas that the wit of clerks and lawyers can suggest, meet the Board at every turn. One man pleads that he is too busy to construct purification works; another that trade is too slack; a third will do something when the stream is clean above him, another when it is clean below. One manufacturer claims that he should not be called upon to purify his refuse because the stream into which he discharges is a very old one. One of the difficulties that manufacturers have to contend with is the disposal of their sludge, and it is not every one who can boast, as one has done, that he has found a valuable use for it; namely, to stop up a footpath across his fields. 'We have a great grievance,' said the Chairman of a local Bench, himself a manufacturer and an offender, and sitting on a fellow-culprit's case; you have harassed us. The whole system is rotten from beginning to end. This is simply persecution. It is not trying to purify the river. You are persecuting people in the district, which I say the Rivers Board have aimed at from the first.' What is the law regarding the sludging of mill dams? Can a stream which has been found to be a stream be nevertheless a sewer, and therefore, when the Local Authority has constructed its own sewer, still remain a legal channel for manufacturing effluents? And, generally, what are the rights of manufacturers to drain into the sewers, with or without previous treatment of their trade refuse? These are questions still sub judicibus, and will probably remain so, owing to the varying conditions and circumstances of nearly every case. Powerful interests hamper the work of the Board. No private individual could hope to do anything against such a body as that of the West Riding of Yorkshire Mill Owners' and Occupiers' Association. It has been in existence some six years, and at its outset was known by the humbler title of the Colne and Holme Valleys Mill Owners. What the object of the Association is and has been will best be gathered from the answer given by one of its members to the Royal Commission on Sewage Disposal on the 6th of May, 1902. This witness was asked, 'Is the object of the Association, so far as your experience goes, to further the purification of the rivers?' to which question he replied, 'I have never seen anything to make me think that it is; as far as I know, it is to fight the Rivers Board, so far as any business I have heard of them doing.' The influence of the Association has ever been in antagonism to the work of the Rivers Board, and in a number of cases its funds have been used to defeat the ends of the Board. On the other hand, many manufacturers loyally, at considerable expense, have aided and are aiding the Board in their work; and in justice to them one universal law should prevail throughout the country. The third report of the Commission which has just been issued deals with two matters of the highest importance, trade effluents and the creation of a new central authority. The Commissioners hold that purification of trade effluents by the Local Authority is usually practicable; while by the manufacturer it is in some cases difficult, if not impracticable, and more costly than if carried out by the Local Authority. They therefore are of opinion that the law should be altered so as to make it the duty of the Local Authority to provide such sewers as are necessary to carry trade effluents as well as domestic sewage, and that the manufacturer should be given the right, subject to the observance of certain safeguards, to discharge trade effluents into the sewers of the Local Authority if he wishes to do so. They add that it is desirable some preliminary treatment should be carried out wherever practicable by the manufacturer; that in exceptional circumstances as regards volume, quantity, or otherwise-power should be granted to the Local Authority to make a special charge, and also to undertake the disposal of sludge. The Commissioners recommend the creation of a properly equipped central authority as essential in their opinion, and that Rivers Boards should be formed throughout the country. We may hope that the final report of the Royal Commission, on which Colonel Harding, the present Chairman of the West Riding Rivers Board, has played a distinguished part, bringing into its deliberations his practical knowledge of the subject and his sound judgment, will stimulate public opinion; and that the Government, recognising the gravity of the position, will lose no time in introducing a Bill dealing in a comprehensive manner with the pollution of rivers. Legislation is urgently needed. Offenders use the Commission as a specious excuse for their laches, and only a few weeks ago a Judge was asked to hold his hand because the Government would shortly settle these vexed questions. Meanwhile our task is a clear one: to work on steadily with the tools we possess, until the Legislature provides us with better ones. We believe that we have the confidence of the public, and that their interest in our work is increasing. If we have been the cause of expense to others, we have been careful of the finances of the Board itself. Since the beginning of its work in 1893 the total cost has been one penny in the pound on the rateable value, 53,000l.; the price of a picture or of three or four china vases. The yearly expenditure of the Board should not exceed in the future, allowing for an increase in the number of inspectors, the sum of 8000l., or one-sixth of a penny in the pound. What is the money value of the Wharfe or the Nidd, and of scores of becks restored to their pristine purity? Filthy as the Calder still is, a change even in its condition has taken place. Mr. Booth, of Wakefield, who has used the river for the last forty years for scouring, fulling, finishing, and dyeing, found the water so foul for the latter purpose that twenty years ago he had to construct settling tanks. These have been cleaned out twice a year. Three years ago the quantity of sludge began to greatly diminish. In 1902 the quantity had diminished more than one-half, the quality of the water itself having improved so as to render dyeing operations less difficult and more reliable. He adds that in his experience the condition of the river water is very much improved. We may claim to have done something to upset the timehonoured belief that has existed from the earliest times, that the first function of a stream is to carry filth away into the sea. I always think of Augeas as a paper manufacturer and of Hercules as the first polluter of rivers. Lydgate, writing in the first half of the fifteenth century, says in his description of Troy that there was no filth seen in the city, as everything was borne away by the course of the river through large and wide conduit pipes. So covertly every thynge was covered, What became of the wicked ayre,' the sewer gas of to-day, we are not told. Two centuries later Milton speaks of those who were 'in populous city pent, where houses thick and sewers annoy the air.' In the chief city of Utopia 'the filth and ordure was clean washed away in the running river without the city in places appointed mete for the same purpose.' Yet other views have prevailed. The Persians, according to Herodotus, held their rivers in extreme veneration. They will neither spit, wash their hands, nor evacuate in them; nor will they allow a stranger to do so.' Here is an ideal for the Rivers Board to aim at. Perhaps some such ascription of divinity to the stream, as existed of old, might aid us in our task; some fear of the god's anger if his home were polluted might be inculcated. Richard Linnegar of Wakefield, writing in 1789 some stanzas on a young lady reading by the side of the Calder, speaks of the god that claims the liquid tide-'With pleasing smiles his face was drest, his face benignant shone.' Where are now his smiles, what are now his looks? The Clyde, the Tweed, and the Forth were usually named by those who dwelt on their banks with a sort of respect and pride, and VOL. LIV-No. 317 H Sir Walter Scott knew of duels occasioned by any word of disparagement. We can hardly hope for such a consummation as this, and that tempers will be lost over the defamation of the Bradford or the Batley Beck. Marked improvement, however, every succeeding decade we may confidently look for. The work of purification will not grow harder as years follow one another. The chief burden has lain on our shoulders, the necessary organisation and education that led to the formation of a central authority, to which further powers will be given as enlightenment touches a larger area. Wealth can now with difficulty find an outlet, or at any rate a worthy outlet. All our pictures and books, our statues and creations of art, may become the ornaments of American houses; but it is allowable to believe, without any reflection upon science, that the Wharfe and its surroundings cannot be taken away, and will still remain an integral part of our Riding. Future philanthropists and statesmen may seek and find the noblest outlet for their energies in the embellishment of their own country, in enabling men to see the light of the sun, to enjoy pure air and pure water, and some day perhaps our descendants in the West Riding may say with the Psalmist, 'He shall drink of the brook by the way: therefore shall he lift up his head.' CHARLES MILNES GASKELL, Chairman West Riding Rivers Board, 1893-1903. THE OLD THATCHED RECTORY AND ITS BIRDS THE Rectory is a picturesque, comfortable-looking building, of no special architectural pretensions, and of no very great antiquity, but with an atmosphere and a charm of its own which proclaim it, at almost the first glance, to be not so much a house as a home-a home in which it would be a happiness to live, and no bad place to die. Its walls bulge here and there, but they are thick and weather-proof, made to stay' and of a rich brown brick, weather-tinted and lichen-clad, the product of the clay-beds of Friar Mayne, in the adjoining parish of Knighton. ་ In front, the house has two wings, running up to high gables and projecting at right angles from the main building, which is also gabled, and they flank a paved open court which leads into the hall. A word first about the interior. Its main feature is the hall, which is of a size and comeliness, with its quaint Jacobean wooden chimney-piece, its richly finished cornices, and its elaborate plaster panellings, such as you would hardly expect to find in a country parsonage. During the years when it was my home, it was crammed with pictures and with china, with curios of every description, with old oak chests filled with toys for children of all ages, with oak chairs and tables, and-most cherished treasure, perhaps, of all-with an old carved writing-desk of oak, with the date 1630 upon it, at which Wordsworth had written many of his poems. On one wall was an ancestral chiming clock, and near it an organ, which was also hereditary and of rich tone for its kind. There was a rocking-horse which had done good service with three generations of children, and which, prancing as it did, in front of a green iron chest with a double lock and a lid of portentous weight, which contained the baptismal and marriage and burial registers of the rude forefathers of the hamlet from the sixteenth century downwards, and bearing often the same names throughout, seemed to bring the 'spacious times of great Elizabeth' into close juxtaposition with those of Queen Victoria. The whole was a medley of treasures which, in their number, their richness, their variety, were typical of the |