232 ADDITIONAL NOTES ON TREE-TRUNK WATER-PIPES.
but it became necessary to remove them, and substitute iron
pipes, "though at that period some prejudices were enter-
tained with respect to their affecting the quality of the water."
The exact date of this substitution of iron for stone pipes
is not given.
Of the Southwark Water Company we learn that "prior to
this period (1820-22) the supply of water had always been
conveyed through wooden pipes, but these were gradually taken
up, and iron pipes of larger dimensions substituted."
We are told of the Lambeth Company's pipes :—
" The principal mains are iron : eighteen, twelve, ten, and nine inches
diameter, though till lately a considerable part of the service pipes were of wood.
but iron pipes have been gradually substituted for them, and this operation will
continue till the whole consist of the latter material." (p. 125).
As we learn on p. 124, that the Lambeth Company obtained
a certain Act of Parliament in 1834, the passage referring to the
nature of the pipes used was apparently written in the year of
publication, 1835. It would seem therefore that in London,
south of ths Thames, wooden pipes remained in use some years
longer than on its northern shore.
Leaving the water-works of the London district, Mr.
Matthews describes those of Liverpool, Manchester, Edinburgh,
Glasgow and Greenock. The Manchester Company, we learn,
at first tried wooden, and then stone, pipes. But the latter
proved incompetent to sustain the pressure applied. The follow-
ing remarks illustrate the general development of water supply in
England in 1835 (p. 142) :—
" General, as was formerly the practice, to obtain water for domestic and other
uses from wells, by means of a windlass and bucket, or the aid of pumps, it has
long been gradually declining in the great towns and cities of this country. By
the establishment of waterworks in such as are most populous, the method of
supplying it for domestic purposes has been simplified and facilitated. Norwich,
Bath, Birmingham, Sheffield, and many other places, possess these contrivances
to benefit their inhabitants ; but as they resemble several of those already described,
both in principle and operation, any particular detail of each will be unnecessary.
The defective supply of water to Exeter had long been a subject of complaint ;
however, a project has recently been executed for abundantly conveying water to
the residents from the River Exe, so as to obviate the serious inconvenience hereto-
fore experienced. Indeed, it is far from being improbable that, ultimately, works
of a similar nature will be quite as common as those for the supply of gas."
Our author then describes the various modes of water supply
in use, in times ancient and modern, in Athens, Rome, Cairo,
Persia, and many other places outside the British Isles. For my