EVIL SMELLS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume III, Issue 682, 20 January 1866, Page 4

EVIL SMELLS.

A teey udsavoury heading is thin we admit; but we have no time and no inclination to search for language which,would delicately hint at an evil which is so indelicately obtruded on our nasal organ as we walk through certain of our streets, notably Queen-street. Coleridge said he could distinguish no less than 33 distinct evil smells in the city of Cologne, famed for its perfumed waters. "We are not sufficiently trained to analyse the variety of evil smells of Auckland and classify them, but we are very capable of judging of the intensity of them as they fill the mouth and nostrils on walking through the streets. The keenest sense of the vile smells to which we allude is felt after having been some time in a pure atmosphere. What with Ligar's Canal, what with the unflushed sewer in Queen-street, now literally an " elongated cesspool," for want of water —what with the unswept streets, though daily watered, and thus acted upon by the sun's rays constantly evolving a poisonous o-as from their damp impurities never removed —it is indeed a wonder that some epidemic does not break out. "We have a powerful sun acting upon all these sources and depots of impurities, and constantly disengaging therefrom poison which we daily breathe. This has its silent but certain effect in lowering the general health and predisposing the constitution, to epidemic diseases, which latter are caused by the negleet of sanitary measures, and which, Avhen they come, we impiously ascribe to the visitation of a merciful Providence, instead of to our gross carelessness of ordinary cleanliness. We most strongly urge upon the City Board to pAss no longer by on the other side of these filth pest spots, but now that they have a considerable addition of water at their disposal, to use it for cleansing these most intolerable nuisances. Queenstreet ought to be well swept two or three times a week, in the early morning, after it is well watered, and the sewers and gutters flushed, and the latter swept and the refuse carted away.