Punch: Punch (75.1878)

STRONG, BUT PLEASANT.

A report in a. Salopian paper presents to the imagination a vivid
idea of the sanitary state of the district under the dominion of the
Wellington Board of Guardians. At a meeting of those authorities
the other day—

''Mr. H. J. Taylor, Sanitary Inspector, reported as to the existence of
nuisances in various parts of the district, and in most instances orders for
abatement were made."

The gravity—and graveolence—of those nuisances can be under-
stood from the statement, immediately succeeding the above, that—

"The Inspector also reported that in one case there were four pigsties
within three feet of a cottage, and that the filth from the sties ran down to
the base of the house, and caused a great nuisance.

" Mr. Jervis : A farmhouse is no good unless there is plenty of manure
about it. {Laughter.)

"The Chairman observed that he did not consider any pigsty a nuisance.
—No action was taken in the matter."

If no action was taken in the matter—truly matter in the wrong
place—of the four pigsties whose details are described in the forego-

ing quotation—what, as regards cleanliness and odour, must have
been the state of things in the various cases in most of which orders
for the abatement of it were made ? The thought of it is enough to
make any gentleman hold his nose ; except, of course, the member of
the "Wellington Board of Guardians who thinks that " a farmhouse
is no good" unless it be surrounded with the material which he
named ; and save also the Chairman, who said that '' he did not con-
sider any pigsty a nuisance," and to whose nostrils perhaps all
pigsties are nosegays only more or less agreeably odoriferous.

Taste beyond the Tweed.

Falkirk, Lord Rosebery the other day informed a meeting of its
inhabitants, is to be provided with a School of Music and a School
of Cookery. Was there nobody among his hearers to ask why, and
whether it was possible that either Scotch Music or Scotch Cookery
could be improved ? What three dishes are there comparable to
pan-itch, haggis, and sheep's-head and trotters ? What three pieces
of music are equal to " Scots, wha hd'e," " Auld Lang Syne," and
" Tullochgorum" ?