PURE RIVERS.
A joint discovery and invention by the agricultural inquirers at Oxford has, I hope and think, helped to protect the purity of our rivers as well as to do a direct practical service to our farmers. They have perfected a method of drying sugar beets, which, among other benefits, incidentally enables them to rob the waste, or effluent, of all its poisonous qualities, There is no official body in England which possesses greater autocratic power—or more enjoys using it—than the Thames Conservancy. And by their vigilance they have made and kept the Thames one of the purest rivers in the country. It was supposed by many that they would absolutely prohibit the placing of a sugar beet factory-on the banks. A factory was actually prevented at Hereford by fears for the pollution of the Wye. But the new invention has destroyed any such apprehensions. A sugar factory is now established at Eynsham-on-Thames ; and the waste product flowing down a narrow channel into the river is clean and sweet. It would do no harm to the most sensitive grub, snail, or fish, even if it were concentrated ; and, of course, the diffusion is such that even a slightly poisonous effluent would do little or no harm after a passage of a chain or so.
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