THE WATER QUESTION.

Evening Star, Issue 3491, 1 May 1874, Page 3

THE WATER QUESTION.

To the, Editor. Sir, —I daresay nine-tenths of the citizens can easily understand the cause of Dr Bakei well’s zeal in.re gr^idgi him the bpiri^anity l 'dE‘'adVerrißmg' himself as long as you do not, .. .The doctor admit* now that he is no zoblogirij I' amßfraid he it equally hazy in his ideas as to the use of the microscope in determining the quality of water. In his letter which appeared in your issue of 7th‘instant, in reply to Mr Dick, he said, “As to the quality of organic impunities only the microscope .can decide,” He now says, ‘‘ iflipurity does not depend on microscopic evidence at all. ” I|ui the' doctor 'seriris' very’ frightened *abbiM/this crustacean. I should like to ask him is prepared to say, as a medical man, that typhoid fever, cholera, diarrhoea, or any of the other horrible evils he tried to frighted the audience with the other night is, in the least degree, likely to be ipduced by r people drinking these crustaceans ? r ' 't-hope hje’ will carefully look up his “Carpenter on thS Microscope again before replying (to this’. • I am curious to know, too, if Dr Bakewell is aware that organisms can be developed in ordinary water in twelve hours ? Ur Bakewell will also greatly oblige me if he will get Mr George to state publicly that he drew the diagram which was exhibited on the platform the other night directly from what he/(Mr George) : saw .-id ohS /drop of-water under the microscope, and not from a picturb of the wonders to be seen in London watery to be found in a certain book which at prei sent shall be nameless, or from a design given him by Dr> Bakewell? As to - the word “scavenger,” Dr Bakewell is evidently unaware that it has. a technical as. well as a vulgar meaning; 'but probably his knowledge extends only to the latter. In conclusion, let me just remind Dr Bakewell. that here he has not a Creole population to instruct in the simplest wonders of science, but men and women who can estimate at its- right value any such transparent piece of quackery as was attempted the other night.—X am, &c., Robert Gillies. Dunedin, May 1.