STREET WATERING.

Wellington Independent, Volume XXVI, Issue 3103, 20 January 1871, Page 3

STREET WATERING.

<> [Scientific correspondent of Australasian, j Mr Cooper, who some years ago took out a patent for laying.the dust in our streets, has again been urging his views on the public. Acting on the wellknown chemical fact that some of the chlorides possess in a great degree the property of attracting moisture from the air, and even of undergoing solution in the moisture they appropriate, it occurred to him that he might turn this property to account in street-watering. He employed and patented a mixture of equal parts of common salt (chloride of sodium) and chloride of calcium, which was mixed with the water in an ordinary water-cart. He claimed for the process, first, that the solution would dry very slowly, and that a surface saturated with it, after being completely dried by the sun's rays, would attract moisture again as soou as the sun had declined ; second, that the chlorides would combine chemically with and would fix the ammonia and other volatile gases now given off by the organic | dirt ; and thirdly, that they would com- j bine chemically with the materials of the roadway, and would improve its surface. He therefore hoped to effect a great saving in labor, to banish watercarts from the streets during the busy hours of the day, to supply a smaller quantity of water than is at present used (and thus to avoid the excessive production of mud), to improve the surface for traffic, to lay the dust effectually (even over Sundays or other days on which the carts might not be out), and lastly to fix the ammonical and other exhalations. His system was tried in 1868 in Marylebone, where it was not favorably reported on ; but since that date it has been successfully adopted at Malvern, Greenock, Boston, Liverpool, and elsewhere. The saving of water thu3 effected in Liverpool is said to amount to seventy per cent. Fresh experiments have been made this snmmei' in London (at Westminister, down Parliament and Downing streets), from the 3rd to the 6th of June ; and from the report they have received, the Sanitary Committee resolved that the process should not only be continued in Westminister, but extended to the Knightsbridge district. In a paper which he has just read to the British Association, he recommends that a sufficient per centage of chloride and of aluminium (which has recently been introduced as an antiseptic by Professor Gamgee) should be added to the other chlorides, in order to absorb noxious gases arising from putrefaction, and to destroy organic germs. This salt costs only one-third of the price of carbolic acid, and does not possess its unplea- ! sant smell and poisonous properties.