Part 62
It is said that farmers ought to take the single agricultural labourers into their houses, and preside at the labourers’ tables as formerly; what is your opinion as to the practicability of recurring to the old system?—Those who say so are very ill formed upon the subject. Farmers, who were (in manners, wealth, and education) but very little better than their own labourers, might formerly, with comfort to themselves and advantage to their men, receive their carters into their family, and dine at their table with them; but the habits of those times are gone for ever.
Do you think the enclosures of such parishes as Cookham beneficial to the poor?—Yes I do, inasmuch as they extend the demand for the poor man’s only marketable commodity—his labour.
[Every position stated in this examination with relation to the practical operation of the theory of small farm allotments, and of the pig and cow theories, was corroborated by a large mass of evidence from every part of the country, where they had been, for any length of time, in operation.—E. C.]
13.—_Arrangement of Public Walks in Towns; Plan of the Arboretum at Derby, laid out by_ J. C. LOUDON, _Esq._
When it appeared that a general botanic garden would be too expensive, both to create and to keep up; that a mere composition of trees and shrubs with turf, in the manner of a common pleasure-ground, would become insipid after being seen two or three times; and, in short, that the most suitable kind of public garden, for all the circumstances included in the above data, was an arboretum, or collection of trees and shrubs, foreign and indigenous, which would endure the open air in the climate of Derby, with the names placed to each. Such a collection will have all the ordinary beauties of a pleasure-ground viewed as a whole; and yet, from no tree or shrub occurring twice in the whole collection, and from the name of every tree and shrub being placed against it, an inducement is held out for those who walk in the garden to take an interest in the name and history of each species, its uses in this country or in other countries, its appearance at different seasons of the year, and the various associations connected with it.
A similar interest might no doubt have been created by a collection of herbaceous plants; but this collection, to be effective in such a space of ground, must have amounted to at least 5000 species; and to form such a collection, and keep it up, would have been much more expensive than forming the most complete collection of trees and shrubs that can at present be made in Britain. It is further to be observed respecting a collection of herbaceous plants, that it would have presented no beauty or interest whatever during the winter season; whereas, among trees and shrubs, there are all the evergreen kinds, which are more beautiful in winter than in summer; while the deciduous kinds, at that season, show an endless variety in the ramification of their branches and spray, the colour of their bark, and the colour and form of their buds. Add also, that trees and shrubs, and especially evergreens, give shelter and encouragement to singing-birds, to which herbaceous plants offer little or no shelter or food.
There are yet other arguments in favour of trees and shrubs for a garden of recreation, which are worth notice. Herbaceous plants are low, small, and to have any effect must be numerous; while to acquire their names, and look into their beauties, persons walking in the garden must stand still, and stoop down, which, when repeated several times, would soon, instead of a recreation, become very fatiguing. Now trees and shrubs are large objects, and there is scarcely one of them the beauty of which may not be seen and enjoyed by the spectator while he is walking past it, and without standing still at all.
A glance at the plan, _fig. 2_, in p. 6, will show that I have provided as great an extent of gravel-walk as the space would admit of; the total length, including the walk round the flower-garden, exceeding a mile. There is a straight broad walk in the centre, as a main feature from the principal entrance; an intersecting broad and straight walk to form a centre to the garden, and to constitute a point of radiation to all the other walks; and there is a winding walk surrounding the whole. As a straight walk without a terminating object is felt to be deficient in meaning, a statute on a pedestal is proposed for the radiating centre _i._ in _fig. 2_; a pedestal with a vase, urn, or other object, for the second circle in the straight walk, _fig. 2_, _k_; while the pavilions _fig. 3_, form terminating objects to the broad cross walk.
As a terminal object gives meaning to a straight walk leading to it, so it is only by creating artificial obstructions that meaning can be given to a winding walk over a flat surface. These obstructions may either be inequalities in the ground, or the occurrence of trees or shrubs in the line which the walk would otherwise have taken, so as to force it to bend out of that line. Both these resources have been employed in laying down the direction of the surrounding walk, though its deviation from a straight line has chiefly been made in conformity with the varying position of the trees in the belt already existing. This belt, and also the trees in the flower-garden, and in other parts of the plan, which were there previously to commencing operations, and which are left conformably to Mr. Strutt’s instructions, are shown in the plan, _fig. 4_, p. 75. The point of junction of one walk with another is always noticeable in an artistical point of view, and affords an excuse for putting down sculptural or other ornamental objects at these points.
14.—_Boards of Health:—Report on the labours of the “Conseil de Salubrité” of Paris, from 1829 to 1839._ _By_ M. TREBUCHET.
Before the revolution of 1789, M. Lenoir, one of the last lieutenants of police of that period, and one of those who most particularly occupied themselves with the health of the city of Paris, consulted on questions of health and salubrity two men, _Pia_ and _Cadet de Vaux_, both of them apothecaries; the last had the title of inspector-general: it was to him that all matters of health were habitually referred. Later, on the institution of the prefect of police, in whose hands was vested all that related to salubrity and the public health, this magistrate consulted sometimes a physician, sometimes a chemist, sometimes a veterinary surgeon, according to the nature of the case upon which he had to determine.
This state of things presented inconveniences so much the more serious that the number of affairs increasing every day, demanded more unity in the reports, and more activity in the labours. It was then that the necessity was felt of establishing a permanent council. Such was the origin of the “Conseil de Salubrité,” instituted by the prefect of police, Dubois, the 6th of July, 1802. It was composed of four members,—Deyeux, Parmentier, Huzard, senior, and Cadet-Gassicourt. In 1803, M. Thouret was called to the council; afterwards, in 1807, Leroux and Dupuytren; in 1810, M. Pariset replaced M. Thouret, and it was at the same period that the nomination of Doctor Petit took place. From that time the men of the greatest consideration sought to have a part in the labours of the “Conseil de Salubrité.” Thus we see enter successively M. d’Arcet in 1813; M. Marc in 1815; M. Berard in 1817; the engineer Girard, and Huzard, junior, in 1819; Pelletier and Juge in 1821; M. Gautier de Claubry and M. Parent Duchâtelet in 1825; MM. Adelon, Andral, junior, Barruel, and Labarraque, in 1828; Doctor Esquirol in 1829. The greater part of these men no longer exist. Deyeux, Parmentier, Huzard, senior, Cadet-Gassicourt, Thouret. Leroux, Dupuytren, Marc, Girard, Parent-Duchâtelet, Barruel, Esquirol, are no longer there to direct the labours of the council, to contribute their long experience and indefatigable activity; but their labours remain to us, and we can at least draw from them useful instructions, and still enlighten ourselves by their valuable opinions.
Thus, and with the view to preserve these precious traditions, which maintain in the council an unity of design so remarkable, the administration decided from the commencement that their general reports should be printed.
This publication, which stopped in 1828, and of which the continuance was greatly desired, has just been resumed by the orders of M. Gabriel Delessert, prefect of police.
This collection, which is of such general interest, embraces therefore a period of nearly forty years.
Perhaps we are to congratulate ourselves on the delay which has taken place in the publication of these reports. In going over these ten years it becomes more easy to follow the council in the progressive march of their labours, to perceive that they were all based upon a uniform and constant jurisprudence; that they had no other end than the preservation of the public health, the well-devised interest of property and industry. On this account we have always thought that besides the annual reports, extremely useful in other respects, but confined within too narrow a circle, it would be well to publish every ten years a summary, which, retracing what had been done in that long period, should offer a wide field of study both to governors and governed.
Since 1829 the reports addressed to the administration, on the numerous questions which it submitted to the council, amount to 4431. But that of which there remains no trace are the experiments, often even the preliminary reports, the trips, and sometimes the journeys, which each of these reports rendered necessary; labours of which the report is only a summary, and which impart such great authority to the decisions of the council.
These decisions relate to three great divisions,—_health_, _salubrity_, and _industry_. Under _health_ are classed, among other things, the researches on the adulteration of food, on the vessels used in its preparation, on the precautions to be taken with respect to the vessels and utensils of copper, regard being had to the uses for which they are employed; the experiments on the adulteration of salts, on the adulteration of bread and of flour by different substances, on the poisonous substances employed to colour bonbons, liqueurs, &c.; the examination of the methods employed in preparing pork; the examination of the water used for drink; the adulteration of the flours of linseed and mustard; the use of meat of animals who had died of disease; the researches into the salubrity of dwellings. The head of _salubrity_ comprises the anatomical theatres, their construction, the means of remedying the causes of the unhealthiness which these establishments present; the discharge of sulphurous waters from the public baths, the utility of street fountains, the inspection of barracks, and the sanitary measures to which they should be subject; the improvements to be made in the fires of the establishments which employ coals; the arrangements to be made for the deposit of filth in the rural districts; the purification of sewers; the supply of water for domestic and industrial purposes; the steps to be taken in exhumations; the examination of different contrivances to empty privies, the ameliorations to be introduced into this portion of service; the wholesomeness of the markets, the inspection of prisons. The reports which relate to _industry_ principally treat of the construction of slaughter-houses; the condensation of the gas and vapours resulting from the refining of metals; the fabrication, preservation, and sale of fulminating and lucifer matches; the precautions to be taken in the construction of fulminating powder-mills, and in the manipulation of the substances employed there; the measures to be taken for the conveyance of the fulminate of mercury; the researches into the employment of bitumens, and the conditions to be prescribed to the makers; the making wax-candles; the conditions to be imposed on cat-gut factories; the researches on the fires of wash-houses, and on the necessity of decomposing the soapy water to prevent putrefaction; the sanitary measures applicable to white lead manufactories, and the researches on the diseases of the workmen; the propositions of classification for different trades, such as the silk-hat factories, the forges, the places for making and keeping ether; and the beating of carpets.
Thus health, salubrity, industry, offer to the “Conseil de Salubrité” a vast field of researches and investigations, and we may affirm that there is no question relating to these three great departments of the administration which they have not profoundly meditated, and in part resolved. If now we turn to other subjects we still find important labours which touch in several points on the different matters of which we have just spoken, but which have not, like them, a special and clearly-defined character: such are the reports on epidemics and small-pox; the measures to be taken to prevent or combat them; the _epizooties_ that have prevailed at different epochs among several species of animals, and particularly among milking-cows; the sale of horses with glanders, and the regulations to which they should be subject, as well as other animals seized with contagious diseases; the measures to be taken against mad dogs, and the precautions in case of bites from these animals; the modelling, examination, and embalming of corpses; the aids to be afforded to the drowned and suffocated; the measures to be taken to ascertain the number of these accidents as well as of suicides; the compilation of a new nosographic table of the diseases which cause death; the measures to be taken to prevent fires in theatres, &c. &c.
Such is a general view of the subjects upon which the council has been called to give their opinions. It now remains to describe the circumstances which demanded them, and the results they have produced.
One of the objects which more especially engaged the care of the council was that of bread. It is the thing, it is true, which most directly interests the people. The quality of bread may be deteriorated by various ingredients, but no one could have foreseen that noxious substances would be employed with the view, ostensibly at least, of improving it. Nevertheless the correctional tribunal of Brussels was called upon some years since to try some bakers brought before it under a charge of selling bread adulterated with noxious substances. On the occasion of this trial the prefect of police inquired of the council if, as these bakers alleged in their defence, a small quantity of a substance which they called _blue_ alum, put into the yeast, had the property of rendering the bread whiter and less heavy.
In order to give their opinion, the council first examined what was the substance called by the name of _blue_ alum. Some designate by this name the sulphate of copper, but most people mean by blue alum the rock alum, (sulphate of alumina and potass,) because this salt in the lump has a bluish tinge, and, as with all the sulphates, the sulphate of which the base is alumina is the only one which bears the name of alum, it is to be presumed that it is this salt, or rock alum, which goes under the name of _blue alum_, and not the sulphate of copper which is known in commerce by the name of _blue vitriol_.
It had been long known that alum, by the action of heat equal to that of a baker’s oven, swells, increases in volume, and becomes a porous mass, light and very white, which is no longer alum, but a mixture of a great deal of insoluble sub-sulphate with a small quantity of alum, a substance astringent, and not poisonous. It is probable that this property, known to some bakers, determined them to add to bread made of certain flour a little of this alum, which, without being injurious to the health, really made the bread whiter, at the same time that the crust became brown at a less heat.
As to the employment of sulphate of copper (blue vitriol), it is only by a gross error that it could be supposed capable of making bread white. Nevertheless a baker of the town of Gand was prosecuted for putting this poisonous salt into his bread. The commission appointed to examine the bread not having been able to discover any trace of copper, mixed a kilogram of flour, to which was added twenty-four grains of sulphate of copper, and they affirmed that it was impossible to detect in the bread the least trace of the salt they had introduced.
After such an assertion it became interesting to make some researches on the subject. In consequence, the delegates of the council who were entrusted with the inquiry, had four loaves of a kilogram of flour made under their eyes: in one of these loaves was put twelve grains of sulphate of copper, in another eight grains, in a third four grains, and but two grains in the fourth. These loaves rose ill, and although the flour with which they were made produced bread very beautiful and white, the four loaves were so heavy as scarcely to present any cavities. The loaf No. 1 had a green disagreeable colour; the loaf No. 2 was in like manner green, but of a less deep colour than the preceding; No. 3 was also greenish; and No. 4, though colourless, could not support a comparison with the bread made from the same flour pure.
All these loaves were burnt separately in porcelain crucibles to complete ashes. Those of the loaf No. 1 were a beautiful azure blue; those of No. 2 a clearer sky-blue; those of No. 3 had a blue tint of a lighter hue; and those of No. 4 were so slightly coloured that it would have been impossible to infer that they contained copper. But all these ashes, when submitted to the action of sulphuric acid diluted with water, were dissolved, and when tested separately by hydrosulphuric acid, produced black precipitates of sulphuret of copper, which precipitates, tested separately in their turn by concentrated nitric acid, furnished each a quantity of nitrate of copper, equal, within a few fractions, to the sulphate added to each of the four loaves.
It results, therefore, from the preceding experiments which have been made with the greatest care,
1. That the sulphate of copper (blue vitriol) cannot be used in making bread for the purpose of rendering it lighter or whiter, because it prevents its rising, and gives it a disagreeable colour;
2. That by reducing it to ashes, and employing suitable means, almost all the salt of copper added to the bread may be collected again.
We should exceed the bounds of this Article if we were to re-produce the numerous reports on the bread or flour submitted to the analysis of the council, and especially on the bread and flour destined for the use of prisons, on mixed flour, and on the quality of bread prepared from flour mixed with starch. The council after examining this bread remarked, that it was not disagreeable to the taste, nor liable to injure the health. However, they were not able to pronounce on its nutritive qualities. It has therefore been recommended that if bread made of flour so mixed was offered for sale, it should have a peculiar form, in order that the public should know what is the nature of the food which is sold to them. The same conclusions have been come to with respect to the sale of bread made of flour mixed with a seventh of the flour of rice. This bread is, according to the council, savoury and it keeps well, and does not become hard so soon as the bread prepared in the ordinary way. As to its nutritive qualities, the council cannot determine on this particular, the question being one of those which, in the actual state of science, is the most difficult, and which can only be solved by a prolonged use of the bread. To complete the series of reports on all that concerns this species of food, we must speak of the leaden reservoirs made use of by bakers. It was of moment to know whether the employment by the bakers of Paris of leaden reservoirs to keep the water used in making bread could give rise to accidents; whether these reservoirs should be prohibited, or whether they might be allowed with certain modifications?
The council have studied this important question, which is become among chemists an object of controversy. Some have affirmed that the water gets charged with oxide of lead by remaining in reservoirs formed of this metal. Other chemists, of no less repute, and among others Guyton de Morveaux, have established, on the contrary, that the presence of a neutral salt, like sulphate, nitrate or muriate, in whatever quantity, as 000·2, suffices to prevent the water from dissolving the lead; and they explain in this way the use that is made, without any ill effects, of the water of the Seine, and of wells, preserved in leaden vessels, with or without exposure to the air.
This diversity of opinion rendered necessary numerous experiments, which have been made with the greatest exactness by a commission of the council. It results from these experiments:—
1. That distilled water put into a reservoir gives rise at the end of some minutes to the formation of a salt of white-lead, but that this salt does not dissolve in the water, and is precipitated, on the contrary, to the bottom of the reservoir.
2. That the waters of the Seine, and of wells, placed in leaden reservoirs, have given rise, at the point of contact of the water and air, to the formation of a white saline matter, which does not dissolve in water but is precipitated to the bottom of the vessel.
3. That the gaseous Seltz water acts the same on the leaden reservoirs as the water of the Seine, and of wells. Before affirming what precedes, the commission left some water for several weeks in four leaden reservoirs. The liquid was almost entirely evaporated, and the remainder of the water, when filtered, showed no trace of lead on the application of the most delicate tests, such as the chromate of potash, hydrosulphuric acid, and hydriodate of potash.
Water which had remained in a bucket, spread over at the moment, and throughout its whole extent, with a saline matter composed of carbonate of lead and of lime, of sulphate of lime and organic substances, did not leave the slightest trace of lead by the action on the water of the most powerful tests.
In consequence of these experiments, the council pronounced a formal opinion, that the bakers might be permitted the use of leaden reservoirs on condition that they put a cock three inches from the bottom of the reservoir, in order that if the insoluble carbonate formed it might be deposited in the water below the cock, and with the further condition that the reservoir should be cleaned once a-month. For greater security, the council thought that it should be required of bakers to cover over the lead which lines these reservoirs with a thin coat of wax, which would prevent the contact of the water with the metal, and stop the formation of the insoluble carbonate of lead. To apply this wax it is only necessary to heat slightly the lead, and rub it rapidly and several times with a piece of wool done over with wax.