rent; the girdle of insalubrious
establishments which immediately surrounds Paris, individual
_depotoirs_, private _voiries_, manufactories of fertilizing materials,
is no less menacing than disgraceful.

"A single establishment is an exception to this rule, it is the depotoir
of La Villette, in the neighborhood of the _Marche aux bestiaux_. It
would never be thought, from its appearance, that it was the nightly
rendezvous of the most infectious scavengers' carts that traverse Paris.
A coquettish garden, of a surprising greenness, all flowery and
perfumed, charms the eyes; the receiving cisterns conceal themselves
under vaults that do not reveal their secret to the first comer. The
basin of the water of the Ourcq has the most innocent air in the world,
and the return-pumps reveal nothing.

"All night long, the depotoir is visited by vehicles, two or three
hundred in number, which arrive in single file, with a mysterious
heaviness, to discharge themselves in the cisterns. What a discharge! a
thousand to twelve hundred cubic metres--of matter!

"The next morning, all this deposit is relegated to a distance of nine
kilometres, as far as Bondy, by elevating machines: the cisterns are
washed out and cleansed by floods of water; the heavy matter which the
pumps do not take up is put in casks and taken away to be employed
directly in the manufacture of manure, by mixing it with other
fertilizing materials. The transportal of the liquid matter to Bondy is
effected by means of a machine of twenty-five horse-power, through a
conduit thirty centimetres in diameter, which follows the right bank of
the canal de l'Ourcq."

[Illustration: SERVICE MUNICIPAL FORESTIER: TRANSPLANTATION OF TREE ON
THE BOULEVARDS.

After a drawing by L. Vauzanges.]

The great collecteur d'Asnieres, a sectional view of which under the Rue
Royale, is shown on page 299, is five metres, sixty centimetres, in
width, and three metres, forty, in height; the channel for the water in
the centre is three metres, fifty, in width, and one metre, thirty-five,
in depth. On each side is a _banquette_, or sidewalk, ninety centimetres
wide. The collecteurs, as well as the smaller sewers of the streets and
houses, are constructed of masonry laid in mortar, and they are lined
with cement which insures their cleanliness and their sonorousness. The
former quality is maintained by an incessant surveillance, an organized
force of nine hundred and thirty-one men being cons