A London paper says that the sewage problem has yielded a new notion. Sir J. B. Lawes is of opinion that the most profitable way to dispose of sewage is to send it to the sea; its phosphates and other constituents being advantageous to the fisheries, and therefore as likely to come back to us in the shape of food as if spread upon the land, while the acceptance of the idea for practical purposes will make an end of all experiments for the agricultural employment of sewage. Any less capable person would find it difficult to obtain a hearing for the proposals that are based on the idea, but the public will gladly listen to one who has certainly mastered the theory of food production and the utilization of waste material. There is a direct gain, doubtless, to the subject in the fact that it will be regarded from a quite new point of view. -We shall not only have to discover the weak points in the new proposals, but shall perhaps have to rummage amongst our own prejudices, to determine which are to be got rid of to make room for wiser counsels.

Whether sound or unsound, practical or nonsensical, we are certainly put upon a new tack for fresh and unexpected exploration.

There is much in this of sound sense. Nature generally provides an antidote for every evil; and she does for polluted sewage. Philadelphia just now is worrying over the water problem. Much sewage naturally drains into the river, as it does into every river in the world that supplies a large city with water. The Water Department is superintended by a gentleman of admirable character, and superior scientific attainments, and he and the chemists are finding all sorts of terrible things in the water. There is not enough oxygen, and now it is too much albuminoid ammonia, and now too much free ammonia. To-day he would drive away all the population from the banks of the river by making it impossible for them to get rid of the sewage except by wells and sinks; to-morrow he would abolish all the pumps because the water wells get the sewage from the sinks. Another time he would have some thousands of dollars to dredge the mud from the bottom of the riven and again he would have some more thousands to "oxygenate " the water by artificial means.

Then he worries them by telling them that there is just one more death in ten thousand than there is in London, which is considered the healthiest city in the world; so that the average duration of a man's life, supposed to be about 35 years, is shortened five hours by living in Philadelphia rather than in London. To remedy this in the manner he wants would require fifty or sixty millions of dollars. When a noted health reformer, Mrs. Isabella Hooker, was recently showing how much the modern comforts of life shortened life, and was taxed with inconsistency in not practicing what she preached, she retorted that she was willing to give a few years, for the sake of the comforts. And indeed long life is not the only blessing we desire. Most people would be willing to give a few hours of life rather than groan under a taxation that would require the proceeds of many hours of labor a week to pay. And it is unnecessary as Sir J. B. Lawes hints. A thick bed of aquatics in the bed of a river will "oxygenate " the water, and they will feed on all the Ammonia that a moderate amount of sewage yields. Fish will eat all the "albuminoid" material, and it will be pretty foul water that the two together will not clean.

It makes no difference what goes into river water so that the worst gets out again before people drink it. If Philadelphia would keep its river stocked with fish, and encourage the water plants, and get a few large subsiding reservoirs to give time to settle the mud, the millions required by scientific superintendence might be spent on happy homes. The lesson may be useful to people grappling with the sewage question everywhere.