THE plumber, to be fully equipped with the knowledge of sanitary plumbing, and to be up to date, must ever continue a learner, for though he has not now, as in the days that are gone, or are vanishing, to embellish his knowledge of the plumber's craft with that of the painter, glazier, paper-hanger, gas and hot-water fitter, he is required to know a great deal more than the old three-branched hand; and though sewage disposal can hardly be considered to come within the domain of his ken, his drainage knowledge should extend up to the sewer or cesspool.

In fact, in the case of iron drains, he would generally be called. upon to lay them down, and even where they are of stoneware it would still be to his interest, where the drains are laid inside a house, as well as for the general safety of those who inhabit the house, not only to see that the drains were properly disconnected and ventilated, but that they were also sound, or his own good and sound work might get the discredit of some defect or defects in the drains.

2. It is curious - or, as Artemus Ward would put it, " cussed contrariness" - that telegraph wires, which would be better underground, better out of sight as well as out of reach, should be fixed overhead, where they are so much in sight that they often obstruct the vision, and that drains which, when inside a house, would be better fixed above the ground, where they could be seen and examined, should be laid underground, where they can only be inspected after a good deal of opening out, and where only rats are acquainted with their ramifications.

3. In planning the drainage of a house it will often be found that an alteration in the position of some water-closet - sometimes by simply moving it from one side of an apartment to another - will suffice to shorten considerably the length of a drain inside a house; or if the drain may not be reduced in its length by any such alteration, the alteration may enable the drain to be fixed above the floor, where it can readily be seen and examined, even if in some cases it does not wholly dispense with the necessity of bringing a drain inside the house.

In reconstructing the drainage of old houses I have often found it possible to do away with every foot of drain under the ground by carrying some soil-pipe, waste-pipe, or rainwater-pipe on the face of the basement walls, or by laying the pipes on piers in sub-basements. Only the other day, on corning: across a defective drain which ran under the floor of the basement from one end of the house to the other, I found that by carrying a lead soil-pipe, waste-pipe, and rain-water-pipe across a room on the face of the wall to the outside, the whole of the underground drain could be dispensed with.

4. With good arrangement of the sanitary appliances it-ought never to be necessary to fix a soil-drain inside the external walls of a detached or semi-detached house. Where a soil-pipe from some special reason is fixed inside a house, it should always be continued through the external wall, for connection with the drain outside, some few feet away from the foundations. And where the pipe is of lead, to prevent contact with lime and mortar where it passes through the wall, it should be encased with stoneware pipe, and the space between the two pipes should be filled up with dry sand. Where the soil-pipe is of cast iron a stone lintel should be fixed over it, where it passes through the wall, or a relieving-arch should be turned over it, clear of the pipe, to prevent damage to the soil-pipe or drain, in case of a settlement.

5. In terrace houses it is generally absolutely necessary to bring the soil-drain into the house, sometimes to carry it from the front vaults - from the sewer - to the back of the house, where the closets and sanitary fixtures are generally situated. But even in such cases it is not always necessary to bury a drain; for where there is a sub-basement it could be carried upon brick piers, or it could be carried under the floor in a brick-built tunnel, for ready access at any time.

6. It seems a great oversight on the part of architects not to build or form a subway to every terrace house, in which could be fixed, not only the drains - waste-drain, soil-drain, and rain-water-drain - but the gas-main or electric-lighting main, telephone wire, communication-pipe from the water company's main, etc., etc.; but our authorities - our City Commissioners or County Councils, our Vestry Boards - are so little alive to the value of subways, to underground thoroughfares, that rather than have an underground London, where the many alterations and repairs to water-mains, gas-mains, electric-lighting mains, telephone wires, etc., etc., could be carried on without interference with traffic in the streets, they are content to allow the streets and pavements to be ever in the hands of workmen.

7. The essential features of a good drain are as follows, viz., that (a) it shall be sound, both air-tight and water-tight, under greater pressure than it is ever likely to receive in practice; that (b) it shall be permanently sound, i.e., that it shall not only be sound on completion, but that it shall be so constructed that it shall continue so for a lengthy period; that (c) it shall be aerially disconnected from the sewer (or cesspool), and ventilated; that (d) it shall be self-cleansing, i.e., it shall be laid at a proper gradient, and shall have no dips or places in it for harbouring filth; that (e) it shall be laid in straight lines, with inspection-chambers (where cost is no great object) at every change of direction, so that a light may be flashed through it from chamber to chamber, for easy and ready examination.

8. In my works I do not like to trust to stoneware pipes for soil-drains inside a house. Thousands of pipes have been rejected by my people during the last ten years because of one or more of the following faults in them, viz.: fire-flaws or fractures; pinholes or blisters; or from want of hardness, or because they had been insufficiently glazed; or because of their crookedness - want of straightness and truth; or, because of the lopsidedness of their sockets, the sockets having dropped down on one side before they were burnt or in the burning, no good and reliable joint could be made to them, except where a drain deviated from a true line.