SEVILLE. the most notable is the Hospital Civil or de las Cinco Llagos, one of the largest in Europe. The commerce and industries are of consider- able importance. The tobacco factory employs tiOOO hands, and there are iron foundries and machine shops, and mamtfactures of chocolate, soap, perfumes, beverages, corks, silks, and musi- cal instruments, including pianos. The suburb of Triana is noted for its manufactures of pot- ten', and the large Convent of La Cartuja has since 1839 been used as a factory for ceramic products, employing 2000 hands and equipped with modern machinery. The imports of Seville in 1898 amounted to $2,364,900, and the exports to $7,190,510, more than half of which went to England. The chief exports are iron ore (381,- 573° tons in 1898), lead, copper, mercury, and other minerals, oranges, olives and olive oil, cork, grain, and wine. The population, in 1887, was 143,182; in 1900, 147,271. The Hispal of the Phoenicians, the HispaUs of the Romans, was corrupted by the Moors into Jshbilliah, from which the Spanish name of the city was derived. Seville was a place of great importance in the latter period of Roman domin- ion; became the capital of Southern Spain dur- ing the ascendency of the Vandals and the Goths, and was the scene of two notaljle Church coun- cils (590 and 019). It fell into the hands of the Arabs in the eighth century, under whom it prospered greatly, its population reaching 400,- 000. In 1026 it'became the capital of the Moor, ish kingdom ruled by the Abadites (see Abad), from whom it passed, in 1091, to the^Almora- vides, whose rule was supplanted in 1147 by that of the Almohades. In 1248 it was taken by Fer- dinand III. of Castile, when 300,000 Moors left for Granada and Africa. From this time it was the capital of Castile, and when Spain was unit- ed it was for a while the seat of the Court until Charles V. made Valladolid his residence. The city rose to extraordinary prosperity after the discovery of the New World, when it became the residence of princely merchants, and the mart of the colonies, but its trade was afterwards trans- ferred to Cadiz. In 1810 it was taken and rav- aged by Soult. Consult: Wackernagel, Sevilla (Basel," 1870) ; Parlow, Yom Gimdalqiiioir. JVan- derungen in Sevilla (Vienna, 1888) ; K. E. Schmidt, Sevilla (Leipzig, 1902). S:6VRES, sa'vr'. A town in the Department of Seine-et-Oise. France, 7 miles southwest of Paris (Map: Paris and vicinity). It is cele- brated for its Government porcelain factory, es- tablished in 1756. The public museum has speci- mens of pottery and porcelain wares representing every period and country, and exhibiting the various stages in the development of the indus- try. The town hall has a handsome collection of paintings and sculptures, and a normal school for females occupies the old porcelain factory building. Population, in 1001. 8216. Consult Lauth, 7,a manufacture nrttionale de Sevres, 1S19-S7 (Paris, 1889). SEVRES, Del-x. a western inland department of France, between the departments of Vienne on the east and Vendee on the west (Map: France, F 5). Area. 2337 square miles; popu- lation, in 1896. 346.694; in 1901. 342.474. The department takes its name from two rivers, the S6vre-Niortaise, which flows west into the sea, and the Sfevre-Nantaise, an affluent of the Loire. 15 SEWAGE. It is traversed from southeast to northwest by a chain of hills, called in the southeast the Jtlonts du Poitou, and in the north the Plateau de Gatine. This ridge forms the water-shed be- tween the Loire on the north and the Charcnte on the south. The climate is healthful, and the soil fertile. Cereals, the grape-vine, sugar beets, flax, and various fruits are cultivated. There are numerous coal and iron mines, and good quarries of freestone and marble. Capital, Niort. SEWAGE (from sew-, the apparent base of sewer) DISPOSAL. The question of the best means for removing household wastes from indi- vidual premises was only beginning to receive- general attention in 1850; but to-day collection and removal may be considered as no longer in question. The sanitary emancipation of liun- dreds of small and scores of large towns and cities followed the introduction of the separate system of sewers (see Sewerage and Drain- age), with its relatively small, cheap, and self- cleansing pipe conduit system. But sewers, or the. water carriage system of waste removal, sometimes proved to be only a temporary solu- tion of the disposal problem, on account of the consequent pollution of public water supplies and the less important, but much more palpable, oflense to the nostril and eye caused by the foul- ing of streams and other bodies of water. Thus, in many instances, the burden was merely shifted and the problem left unsolved. It must be understood that in the long run practically all these household wastes must reach either the water or the soil, and that ulti- mately the bulk of the liquid portion reaches the water. Disposal of sewage on land is a recognized method of purification, but dis- charge into water, provided the volume of water be large enough, and not used for domestic sup- plies, may be just as effective and sanitary. Nature has abundant means for transforming all organic wastes into harmless and useful prod- ucts. But the capacity for this in a given area of land, or body of water, is limited. Until the adoption of the water carriage system of sew- erage, household wastes were deposited on or in the soil. With the concentration of peoples in cities the soil became overburdened and re- course was had to the nearest' water. As soon as nuisances arose here, and particularly when it began to be seen that public water supplies were thus endangered, there was a return to land, only the disposal now was collective, in- stead of individual, and remote from, instead of upon, each man's premises. Through a lack of knowledge of the principles involved, or because of either a scarcity of proper land or of money to buy and prepare it, the sewage farms, or broad irrigation areas, thus established became oversaturated, clogged, and offensive, or 'sewage siek.' It was then sought to relieve these areas by removing the solids from the sewage, a plan which had been and continued to be carried out in the case of water disposal. A further mo- tive, where the sewage was discharged into water, was the desire to save the fertilizing material in the sewage. Sedimentation, or when this process was hastened, chemical precipita- tion, was the method employed. Some people went so far as to believe that chemical precipi-
