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RAWLINSON bases on his own wide personal experience of similar works in England. and he points out that the course he prescribes will be in the end the truest economy in securing more solid and lasting work. A more liberal use of Portland cement implies of course a larger expenditure under this head, but it has not been possible in the time, to complete the calculations of the cost of the increased cement involved in the proposition, so that I am compelled to defer my report on this point to a future opportunity. I may however briefly state here that as far as I am able to see, the additional cost would not be so great as to make it prohibitive, but that additional cost would of course be less or greater in accordance with the height to which the dam is carried up.
Before finally leaving the question of Tytam accounts, the disbursements under which service amount so far to $428,000, it is only right to state that these works have been prosecuted up to date with due regard to the most stringent economy in every branch and detail. The work may be rough, but it is solid and it will be lasting. In spite of climatic and other adverse conditions, its cost continues to compare most favourably with that of similar works in England, where facilities are much greater for the realization of undertakings of this kind than in Hongkong. It is said that comparisons are odious. I do not find them so in this instance. On the contrary, I consider it satisfactory that we should have been able to keep below English estimates at all, and the more satisfactory that we should be so far below them, If the cost of this important enterprise in which the Colony has embarked be large, it is because the adequate provision of water for an urban population is necessarily a most serious and costly affair if done properly. Other Govern- ments and communities have had to make the same sacrifices, and it is to be questioned whether any public aim is more worthy of a sacrifice or whether any greater boon can be conferred on a people than a generous supply of water. apprehend that no person in this Colony who has cared to gratify his curiosity as to the keenness of the privations which the humbler classes have been silently under- going all these years for want of water, or the discomfort which the middle classes have equally suffered, can deny that more water is our first want, or that its earliest attainment is the more desirable if it can be procured at a less cost than has gene- rally been paid by communities in England poorer than ourselves, and perhaps in less straits for it.
I
In Europe the cost of carrying out water-works for the supply of towns differs very much with the local conditions in each particular case. In towns situated in the immediate neighbourhood of rivers or lakes, pumping arrangements may be feasible at far less cost than gravitation works, but as a general rule pumping works though less in their initial cost, greatly exceed gravitation works in their subsequent annual expense, for they involve the consumption of coal, the constant wear and tear of steam machinery, and the employment of skilled mechanical labour at high wages, from all of which charges gravitation works are free. The statistics collected appear to prove that gravitation projects average from about £2.10.0 to £3.10.0 and pumping projects from £2.0.0 to £3.0.0 per head of the population.
The following is a list of the costs of some English water-supplies.---
POPULATION.
GALLONS PER HEAD
PER DIEM,
COST
PER HEAD.
London,
3,500,000
30
£4. 2.0
Cambridge,
30,000
15
2. 8.0
Tunbridge Wells,
80,000
35
4. 0. 0
Wolverhampton,
100,000
18
2. 10. 0
Southport,
22,000
22
3. 0. 0
Ryde,
2,350
45
3.
7. 0
Rotherham,
22,000
19
2. 10. 0
Newark,
12,000
20
4. 3. 0
Aylesbury,
20,000
16
2. 12. 0
Swansea,
60,000
22
2. 11. 0
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