e which are printed quite black on
the same plan are those of the Observatoire and the Gobelins, 32.8 and
31.4 respectively.

Nevertheless, the sewerage system of Paris is conceived and carried out
in its general plan with an appreciation of the requirements of modern
sanitary science and an intelligent employment of the science of the
engineer that are quite admirable. The methods of disposing of the
city's refuse in use by many American municipalities, as those of New
York and Chicago, are, by comparison, but dull and stupid perpetuation
of antiquated traditions. The animated controversy over the great
question of _Tout a l'egout_, "all refuse to the sewer," was not finally
settled till 1894, and this method has as yet not been applied to all
the quarters of the city, as stated above, but is being gradually
extended, and nothing but time seems to be wanting to bring about in
this capital a complete solution of one of the most difficult problems
of material civilization. The object of the Parisian method is to avoid
fouling the Seine in any way, and to utilize all the city's refuse,
instead of throwing it away or allowing it to accumulate, a menace to
health and a hideous nuisance. By an excellent system of underground
conduits, well lighted and ventilated, the sewage and the rain-water are
collected, carried by canals and pipes outside the city, and applied,
after proper treatment, to the fertilization of certain arid tracts of
land farther down the river. The principal agent in this "hygienic
transformation of Paris" was the engineer Belgrand, who, at his death,
in 1870, had increased the length of the municipal sewers from two
hundred and twenty-eight kilometres in 1860 to six hundred. It has now
attained a total of fourteen hundred and twenty-one, representing a
capital of a hundred and fifty millions of francs.

The first principle of Belgrand's system was to avoid any discharge from
the sewers into the river during its course through Paris. The great
main sewer, the _collecteur general_, of the right bank, called the
collecteur d'Asnieres, follows the quais from the basin of the Arsenal
to the Place de la Concorde, then burrows under the heights of the
Batignolles to reach Clichy; the collecteur general of the left bank,
which includes the poor little Bievre, traverses the bed of the Seine by
means of a siphon at the Pont de l'Alma and is prolonged by the
collecteur Monceau, which passes under the hill of the Pl