since been written out in full, is thirty-one. This body of evidence is available for future use, but is not here presented.

Names or designations given to the stenches complained of.

Sludge-acid, or sludge, sulphuretted gases, stinking gases, petroleum smells, putrid odors, ammoniacal gases, fat-house smells, offal rendering, bone-boiling, bone-burning, superphospate fertilizer factory stenches, manure heaps and manure dumps, are the designations given in testimony. The name of the spent, or waste, acid, known among the people as sludge acid, has become most common in the mouths of complainants. This is natural, for it appears from the records of proceedings against fertilizer factories, during the past several years, under orders from the Board of Health of the city of New York, and under orders from the Board of Health of Brooklyn, that the intensest nuisance is caused by this waste acid a resultant of the process of the agitation of sulphuric acid with the distilled kerosene. It has been proved to be the most intense and persistent of the stenches, and it has become widely known by common repetition and disrepute of its name, but is often, as the committee believes, applied quite indiscriminately to the total of stench nuisances observable on the high grounds of the central district of New York city. Other stenches as described, and as quite conclusively verified by the committee under its own inspection; as well as by special testimony which came from experts who have had an opportunity of acquiring a correct knowledge of the nature of the nuisances complained of, may be correctly mentioned in the following order:

1. Offensive odors of putrescent animal matters in the nature of offal, putrid fish, and fish-scrap, as well as all other animal scrap in a moist, putrescent state.

2. Gases and effluvia resulting from the contact of sulphuric acid, pure or impure, with such materials and other phosphatic matter, as witnessed in the superphosphate factories.

3. Gas and vapor arising from cooking or burning of fatty animal matters, whatever the process may be, especially the bone boiling and offal rendering as witnessed on Newtown Creek near Hunter's Point.

4. The escape of vast volumes of unconsumed smoke from whatever sources, where oily and fatty, tarry or any kind of animal or offensive organic matters are being partially and unskillfully burned, and allowing the escape of smoke and vapor into the atmosphere, unconsumed and unneutralized, as seems to have been witnessed from the beginning of these complaints, in connection with almost every kind of refinery where these substances are undergoing distillation or vaporization by heat. The open exposure of offal and other putrid matters, and the slovenly manipulation of common manures and fertilizers as witnessed upon the New York side as well as upon the Hunter's Point side; the running of offensive waste materials into the affluents of the East river, and even into this river itself, which has been going on for many years until a deposit of vile mud and sedimentary matter and slime is now smearing many miles of the tidal banks of Newtown Creek and its estuaries, as well as some portions of the East River side, and not a few of the sewer outlets and the slips and docks.

5. Temporary and apparently surreptitious attempts to manipulate

the sludge acid and other matters that produce foul and far-reaching stenches at various points along Newtown Creek; the neglect of proper rules and regulations for the stoking and maintenance of furnace fires in connection with nearly all the establishments that are accused of these nuisances; the exception to this neglect being of quite recent date, and in the few larger works as witnessed in the kerosene establishments that have succeeded in overcoming this evil.

This series of stenches, and these causes of them, have acquired a magnitude that can hardly have been witnessed elsewhere in the world; for the businesses with which they are connected are, with few exceptions, conducted upon an enormous scale. The kerosene works illus trate this fact, so do the superphosphate manufactories, and the restoration of sludge-acid works. Therefore, the whole subject possesses an importance which the petitioners to the Governor have not overrated in their memorial.

Identification and description of them.

A few of the witnesses who have borne voluntary testimony have. confidently asserted that they smelled at various times odors that they could specify. This may have been true in their experience, the stenches from burning fats and bones, from superphosphate factories and the sludge vapor, from petroleum stills and from gas house purifiers, are separately distinguishable. Yet where numerous vapors and gases are combined as they float in the atmosphere, it cannot be considered necessary in establishing the fact relating to nuisances, that each of the polluting agents in the air shall be positively identified and separately named. It would be asking too much. The committee's personal observation, and the testimony of the most trustworthy of the witnesses, alike establish the fact that most of the sickening and offensive vapors that are smelled in the vicinity of Hunter's Point and on the New York side, opposite, are combined effluvia which should be accredited to several causes that are in operation at the same time. There is no doubt, however, that there are certain odors and odorous vapors which are much more persistent and which float farther than others, undiminished or undestroyed as respects their offensiveness and character as stenches. The evidence seems conclusive that this is true of naphthos and certain other special vapors from petroleum oil under treatment by heat or by acids, and such stenches are doubtless as infinitely variable and combined as their chemical changes and characteristics are. It seems to be equally true that the offensive odors from putrid animal matter, and the vapor from the rendering of fats and from bone-boiling and bone-burning establishments, are readily conveyed long distances by the atmosphere with all their pungency and sickening odor. Ammonia and sulphuretted hydrogen, of course, are not conveyed to any great distance; for, as their chemistry proves, they are rapidly absorbed by moisture, and thus diluted and combined and at last rendered imperceptible to the senses. Yet these are offensive enough in the neighborhood where produced, as was witnessed in the vicinity of the Standard Ammonia Works, visited by the committee. The most pungent and suffocating of all effluvia smelled by the committee, or complained of by those who have testified, are those from sludge-acid and from the superphosphate establishments.

According to the testimony of Prof. Nason, and from what the committee judges to be true from its own examinations of the establishments, the heated vapors which hitherto--until quite recently at three or four of the kerosene works-have been given off during the process of "blowing out" and cleansing of the great petroleum stills (of which there are a hundred or more in operation, each with a capacity of from 300 to 600 barrels) produce the most far-reaching and intense of the effluvia connected with the kerosene works. The Empire, the Standard and the Pratt Astral Oil Works now demonstrate the fact that this source of nuisance is, and should ever be, completely prevented; and that by a simple system of hoods and connecting tubes, aided by a suction chamber near the terminus of the collecting tubes, all such vapors are drawn away and blown into a heated furnance, as useful fuel. By this simple and effective process the committee witnessed the control of what was, until recently, one of the chief nuisances of kerosene works.

Alongside the Standard and Empire Oil Works, the mixing and exposure of superphosphate fertilizers is carried on. Near the foot of Eighth street, on the East river, Long Island City, pungent and sickening odors were smelled at a distance of several hundred yards, and were more intense and offensive than all of the odors noticeable about those two largest of the petroleum refineries. The claim that has been occasionally alluded to, if not positively asserted, in the course of the testimony received by the committee, that the commercially pure sulphuric acid used by certain superphosphate manufactories, has prevented all nuisance from such exceptionally well-conducted places, does not seem to be well founded; for at one of the largest of these establishments on the Queens county side of Newtown creek, at which it was found that clean commercial acid was being used, of about 55° (Beaumé test), the committee found the atmosphere of the place densely loaded with the offensive effluvia characteristic of the superphosphate manu

acture.

Combinations of various effluvia.

The committee need only show upon the chart of the nuisance districts how the whole series of effluvium factories and materials is distributed along the lines eastward from the East river, opposite the central regions of New York. Any effluvium that pertains or attaches to heated vapors or gases may be floated westward, eastward, or in any direction, for a considerable distance, whenever the vapors with which it is connected are sufficiently heated to permit the whole to be wafted onward in a given moving stratum of the atmosphere. Under such circumstances it is not one stench alone, but necessarily a combination of all the stenches that reach and float in the moving current of air, and the question how far they may float onward together seems to have been determined by an unpleasant experience of thousands of inhabitants of New York city. The varying amount and intensity of the effluvium nuisance and of the share which each one takes in the total, are points on which we have no other evidence than that which is presented in the testimony and statements which the committee is now prepared to submit. On particular days in the week, and at particular periods of the same day, the mixing of sulphuric acid or sludge

acid with the animal and earthy matter, which constitutes the phosphatic and ammoniacal basis of the fertilizer, may be in full operation, and at all other times no such mixing of acid will be going on. In like manner ammonia factories may carelessly, or by accident, set free great volumes ammoniacal and sulphuretted vapors, heated or otherwise, from certain parts of their buildings, or at the water-surface, or beneath the surface, as it is undoubtedly, as asserted, a frequent occurrence. In like manner also the manipulating of the sludge, outside of closed metallic tanks by which the well regulated kerosene works do now control this dangerous nuisance, will necessarily evolve the terribly disgusting stench that pertains to this substance when in contact with water or moist materials; and, added to all these, there may be, and certainly often are, dense volumes of smoke and offensive vapors evolved from other establishments in the districts in which the stenches are produced. These, taken together, make up the total stench nuisances. against which the people are protesting.

This committee feels warranted in the assertion that fully ninety per cent. of the total nuisance of stenches complained of, is the direct result of needless and culpable negligence, and failure to adopt and enforce suitable rules and regulations, and to introduce well known approved means for controlling and preventing such nuisances.

CONCLUSIONS

1. Concerning Refuse and Waste materials from the Cities. All such matters need to be removed as thoroughly and as promptly as possible, for the protection of the health and comfort of the people. The value of the materials themselves requires that this should be systematically done, and done without waste. Animal and regetable matters in the form of garbage from kitchens, markets and butcheries seem to be imperfectly disposed of, and that which is subject to the processes of rendering, bone-boiling, and bone-burning is not carried sufficiently far away from the built-up districts. The methods of utilizing waste materials are rude and nasty; there is little effort made to prevent nuisance from this class of substances. The removal and general control of manure from the stables and dumps in the cities have not been subjected to complaint by any of the voluntary witnesses excepting those in the vicinity of Long Island railways, upon which the manure from New York is accumulated. The committee has obtained evidence that the sources of nuisance from the manure of New York, as regards its daily removal and methods of shipment, showing that there should be no nuisance wherever publicly complained of, because all these processes are already greatly improved in the regulations put upon them, and can be made inoffensive.

Accumulations of manure upon any docks, or along any passenger railways, as at present witnessed in Long Island City, will need to be prohibited The question of the more distant and sequestered storage of such material should be promptly settled; not only are the three cities, bat millions of people who travel upon the railways and ferries, are interested in this. In like manner, thousands of inhabitants of New York may be needlessly annoyed by any one of the manure dumping and mixing yards, wherein vast quantities remain improperly on storage for months, close by densely populated streets. The whole busi

ness of manure storage should be farther and sufficiently away from the cities and all populous neighborhoods, and away from close proximity to great passenger railways, ferries and stations. Local Boards of Health should adopt and enforce uniform and strict rules against this filth nuisance.

The committee can safely express as its own conviction and judgment, that the chief and most noticeable sources and causes of offensive effluvia, whether in the nature of gases, vapors, smoke, or any kind of stench, are found to depend upon preventable kinds of neglect, carelessness, ignorance and nastiness; that some things are, in their very nature and condition of putrescence, so offensive and injurious, that no excuse can be found for permitting them to remain in the presence of any city or populous place any longer than is necessary for securing their promptest removal; that as regards the substances, businesses and methods which can be rendered inoffensive, whatever their possibilities of producing stenches and defiling the atmosphere may be when neglected or improperly managed, the committee finds it a duty to ascertain what the best experience and evidences are that such offensiveness may be entirely prevented by those who have the management of the same; that what is now found to be entirely practicable in preventing and controlling such sources of nuisance should be fully understood, faithfully enforced, not only by the sanitary authorities, but by the managers of all such materials, businesses and methods; that such canses of nuisance as are not so proved to be manageable and preventable should be removed to a sufficient distance from the population that are helpless to prevent and avoid the stenches, as to cause no offense excepting to those who are concerned in such management and business.

2. Concerning the Oil Refineries.

The committee finds that causes and sources of intense and muchcomplained of stenches from petroleum oil works seem to have existed, for many years past, along Newtown creek and the East river side of Hunter's Point; it has also been proved that, in consequence of persistent pressure brought to bear upon the largest of these oil companies by the Health Board of New York city, these companies have recently begun to institute important improvements both mechanical and administrative throughout all their refineries. Scientific and experienced men employed by some of these companies at present concede all that has been asserted regarding the offensiveness of certain products and processes in the refining business. There is good. evidence that no small part of the causes of such offensiveness is well understood by the men who manage the refineries. The clearing out and steam " blowing" of heated stills may be quoted as evidence of knowledge and cause of evil which, until recently, has not been controlled. Close hoods and suction conduits are the simple and quite effectual methods now of controlling this source of nuisance, and their adoption at the Standard, Empire and Pratt refineries sufficiently attest the controllability of this evil.

Sub-surface tubular drainage for the recovery of waste oily matters upon the premises of the refineries is proved to be entirely practicable, and this is a source of protection from nuisance and from conflagra