cost, for a length
of two hundred feet, less than three dollars.

For any ordinary household of six or eight persons, where the
water-closet is not used, two hundred feet of drain of this sort will be
sufficient. If there are water-closets, it may be well to duplicate the
length; and, to provide for the necessary connections to lead the liquid
to the drains, we may assume that in all five hundred feet of length
will be required. The cost of two-inch tiles at the works, in small
lots, and where collars are furnished, is about three cents per foot;
and we will suppose that transportation will increase the cost to five
cents per foot, making the cost of this item twenty-five dollars. The
strips of board (three inches wide) will cost, at a very liberal
estimate, five dollars more, and the cost of digging and laying not more
than another five dollars; so that the establishment of this means of
disposal, under the most liberal allowance of prices, will not exceed
thirty-five dollars. Ordinarily, especially where neighbors combine to
buy their material in larger quantities, it will hardly exceed one-half
of this amount. This, be it understood, is for a complete and permanent
substitute for the expensive and nasty cesspool now so generally
depended upon in the country.

A piece of ground fifty feet square, having ten rows of tile five feet
apart and fifty feet long, will suffice for even a large household with
an abundant water supply. For the better illustration of the arrangement
of this system, I give in Figure 10 a plan for the work in the case of a
lot fifty feet wide, with a depth of open ground behind the house of
somewhat more than fifty feet. The leaching drains may safely begin at a
distance of even ten feet from the back of the house, requiring for the
whole a clear area of only fifty feet by sixty feet. With small
households, the length of drain may be very much shortened. In my own
case, where water-closets are not used, the total length of irrigation
drain is, as before stated, only two hundred feet.

[Illustration: FIG. 10.]

The earth-closet was invented by the Rev. Henry Moule, vicar of
Fordington, in England, more than ten years ago. Its progress in England
has been considerable, and its introduction there has resulted in a
profit to the company undertaking it. In this country it has met with
less general favor. Two companies with large capital, after expending
all their resources, have been obliged to ab