THE OLD AND THE NEW.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20334, 16 February 1928, Page 13

THE OLD AND THE NEW.

A VETERAN’S VIEWS. DRAINAGE AND OTHER MATTERS. (Special to Daii.s I'mea.) WELLINGTON, February 15. He was in his seventies, writes “ H.P.” in the Dominion, but an extremely clearheaded and logically-minded man who had kept up with the pace of things through sticking to his job in the city and rubbing shoulders with all sorts and conditions of men much younger than himself. “ 1 scarcely know what to think of all this hygienic pother,” he said, referring more or less vaguely to the pasteurisation of milk at the municipal depot. Do you know that in the English village I came from there was no talk of anything of the kind? That was 70 years ago, and things may be different there now, though the villages don’t change much, I am told. It was the village of Wilmington, in Kent, not so far from Sevenoaks, where the big railway accident occurred last year. We had no drainage there at all save that what dainage there was made its way by devious means to the village pond, because the pond was the lowest spot in the centre of the village, anc the village was the lowest spot in the country round. “ Yes, and what is more, the farmers and their lads used to wash their horses In the pond and slop round in it, and tk. cows use to drink out of it, and we used to use the milk they gave. Yes, and the ducks and goose swam iu it, and we ate them at Christmas-time and found them good. I think wc also drank the water, for X cannot remember anything In the way of a tap, and I'm sure wc had no tanks. There might have been a well, bnt then it was not everyone who had wells, “ Yet, for all this, I can’t remember anything in the nature of disease breaking out. The people lived on and on, and died usually between 75 and 105, never worrying for a moment about drainage, or the lack of it, nor of the bacteria bogies that have been frightening the world for the past generation. Indeed, our villngi was considered a very healthy spot. My sister wont back there after 40 years’ residence in New Zealand, and the only person she missed was an old man who was GO years of ago when we left. She was told that he died peaceably enough at 10S.”