ion of a reservoir for the water with which to flood
it. This was decided upon in 1737, and completed in 1740. Sewers were
constructed also in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple and Rue de Turenne, the
open ditch Guenegaud was covered over, and the Invalides and the Ecole
militaire were supplied with water. A police ordinance of January 9,
1767, forbade the inhabitants to put out in the streets any broken
bottles, crockery, or glassware, or to throw them out of the windows;
all individuals were forbidden, also, by the eighth article, to throw
out of the windows in the streets, "either by night or day, any water,
urine, fecal matter, or other filth of any nature whatsoever, under
penalty of a fine of three hundred livres." The Parisians objected
strongly to this interference with their usual habits, and this question
of sanitation remained long unsolved; in 1769, the Controleur General,
M. de Laverdy, proposed to establish at the street corners _brouettes_,
or small, closed vehicles, in which could be found _lunettes_ for the
benefit of the public. "The contractors promised to turn in a certain
sum to the royal treasury," says the author of the _Memoirs secrets_,
"which transformed the affair into an impost worthy of being compared to
that which Vespasian laid upon the urine of the Romans."

This idea, much derided at the time, was the germ of the modern
_cabinets inodores_, those very useful institutions which do so much to
disfigure the streets of Paris. In 1845, small cabinets of this
species, mounted on wheels, could be seen on the Place de la Concorde,
drawn about by a man, who stopped when signalled by the passer-by, but
these soon disappeared. By a special law, passed February 4, 1851, the
establishment of _lavoirs publics_ was authorized in several quarters of
Paris, and these establishments have continued to multiply.

The problem of supplying Paris with good drinking water is not yet
completely solved, though immense progress has been made within the last
sixty years. The cholera epidemic of 1832 did much to arouse the
municipal authorities to the necessity of radical reform both in the
water-supply and in the system of sewage. At this date, the city was
furnished by the pumps in the Seine, by the selenitic water drawn from
Belleville, from the Pre-Saint-Gervais and from Arcueil, and from the
canal de l'Ourcq,--inferior in quality and insufficient in quantity. The
public fountains had long been the great resource of the