greatly increased volume. In the original design for this work, made before the present Board took office, no adequate provision had been made for the necessary branches at the intersecting streets, nor for the required number of stop-cocks on the line ;-an effort was made to remedy these omissions, and also to substitute curves for right angles in passing out of Eightieth street to Fifth avenue; from Fifth avenue to Seventy-ninth street, and thence into the Third avenue. These imperative alterations delayed the work, and when the castings were received, owing to their peculiar form, and the necessarily hurried manner in which the patterns were got up, several of the pieces failed to sustain the required proof of three hundred pounds to the square inch ;-nevertheless, all the curves were satisfactorily inserted, but time would not permit the delay required to procure new castings to supply the place of condemned stop-cocks and branches. These must be added hereafter, and to facilitate the work sleeves have been so placed as to make the connections an object easily accomplished at any time when required. The contract for furnishing this entire list of 30-inch pipes has been fulfilled by Mr. Kemble, of the West Point foundry, with a promptness and energy highly satisfactory to this Department.

The Board are impressed with the belief that this work has cost several thousand dollars more than it would, had proper regulations in regard to cartage and labor been interposed at its commencement. Coming into office after all the arrangements in these particulars had been made, it has not been possible to introduce such changes as would assure proper economy and accountability in all the details of the work. Another extraordi

nary source of expenditure has been the filling in and regulating of Seventy-ninth street, from the Third to the Fifth avenue. This was forced upon this Department; much of the line of pipes in this street was supported on masonry, several feet above the surface of the ground, and to protect them from freezing in the winter, required 8,834 cubic yards of filling, supported on each side of the street by stone walls, in some places to the height of ten to twelve feet, the whole costing more than four thousand dollars. This sum could have been saved to the city treasury if the Common Council had, by ordinance, directed the regulation of this street in anticipation of conducting the water through it.

To give to this expensive extension of the line of Croton water pipes the benefits of which it is susceptible, and in a direction of all others the most essential,-it should be continued from the Third avenue through Forty-second street, and connected with the distributing reservoir. Experience has demonstrated that during the warm months, when in addition to the necessarily increased consumption of water for domestic use, vast quantities are wasted in the most reckless disregard of the ordinances passed to control this subject,-it is impossible to maintain in the distributing reservoir a head sufficiently high to make it available in the upper stories of hotels and dwellings in the more elevated parts of the city. The average depth in it, during three months of the past summer, has not exceeded twenty-six feet, and has been as low as twentyone; (it ought to stand at thirty-three feet;) and this too when the receiving reservoir has been constantly full to overflowing. The causes are obvious. The influent and

effluent pipes at the distributing reservoir are of the same capacity. When the water in it is low, the influent pipes, under the great pressure of a full head in the receiving reservoir, will pour into it a greater quantity than the effluent pipes can discharge, and for a brief period the rise is rapid and certain; but as the water in the two reservoirs approaches the same level, the hydraulic pressure in each becomes nearer equal, and the water flows out about as fast as it comes in. The connection proposed will increase the supply by the capacity of a 30-inch pipe taken from the receiving reservoir, and by closing a stop-cock its whole power can be made available in any emergency. Intimately blended with this is another object; namely, that of connecting the influent with the ef fluent pipes at the distributing reservoir, by carrying a 36-inch line from Forty-second street through the Fifth avenue to Fortieth street. This would give, in connection with the main just laid in the Third avenue, a supply to the city, nearly, if not quite equal to its ordinary wants for domestic purposes only, independent of the distributing reservoir, and effectually silence all complaint of a want of water in the upper stories of buildings, as well as greatly increase the facilities of cleansing or repairing that reservoir when either becomes necessary.

The amended regulation of the Fifth avenue, and the intersecting streets on Murray Hill, now. in process of being completed under the direction of the Department of Streets, in conformity to an ordinance of your Honorable Body, will compel this Department, as early in the spring as the weather will permit, to lower the two lines of 36inch pipe, from the distributing reservoir to Thirty-fourth

street, a distance of about 1,400 feet, and at an estimated expense, without rock excavation, of fifteen thousand dollars. To effect this, without cutting off, or materially affecting the supply to the city, is a work of difficulty, requiring great engineering skill, and if much rock be encountered, of which there is little doubt, the risk will be very much augmented. The concussion produced by blasting, in close proximity to these large pipes, under pressure to near the extent of their power, is full of danger, and a rupture exceedingly probable.

In directing this alteration of grade, involving so heavy a draft upon the city treasury, and resting the supply of water to the whole city upon such doubtful contingencies, it is presumed that the Common Council has not acted without the most controlling necessity.

The rapid increase of the city, accelerated by the introduction of the Croton water, has already placed a large population far beyond the present water district, and daily presses upon this department applications for its extension. The most urgent of these have been provided for in the estimates submitted to the Common Council on the 17th of December last, but many are left for future action, which, with new applications to be received, will, probably, for some years yet to come require an annual expenditure for "water-pipes and laying," of near a hundred thousand dollars.

The unnecessary, and even wanton waste of water during the whole year, but especially in the hot months, cannot have escaped the observation of the Common Council. Street hydrants are opened, and kept running

for months together; street washers are converted into jets. for the amusement of children and domestics; the streets are saturated, and the dust changed into a semi-liquid mud, by those employed to sprinkle them, to the ruin of the pavements; street sweepers instead of collecting into heaps, and carting away the accumulations of the gutters, find it more convenient, with a full head of water from a street hydrant to wash the whole into a receiving basin, and thence to the public sewers, to be removed at fourfold greater cost; while in many of the stores in the lower wards, no care is taken to close the various openings supplying water-closets and wash-basins, and the water may be heard during the still hours of the night, rushing though numerous lateral drains into the street sewers. To these prolific causes of waste must also be added great carelessness in shutting hydrants along the wharves, used to supply steamboats, especially those employed upon the different ferries,

The necessity for a more rigid police, and more stringent rules regulating the use of water, will be apparent, when it is stated that very nearly the whole volume of the Croton river has been delivered in the city during many weeks of the past summer, amounting to at least sixty imperial gallons each twenty-four hours, for every inhabitant; a supply three times greater than any legitimate use of it, would demand. It is true that the quantity may be increased at will, by the construction of new reservoirs, but before incurring this expense, economy requires that an effort be made to compel the observance of existing ordinances regulating its use. This will not be an impossible duty, if the power of this Board be not, (as now), rendered nugatory, by the too willing action of