WILL you pardon me for asking a question which probably I ought to be able to answer myself? Mr. Corfield, in his interesting comparison of the hygienic performances of the ancients and ourselves, mentions the well-known Cloaca Maxima as one of the great glories of the Romans. Can he tell us how they got the sewage into it? I presume the invention of Bramah was not known in those times, and I was a little disappointed in not finding in his able paper a solution of a mystery which has puzzled me since my childhood. What did the Romans want with a Cloaca Maxima, and how did they use it?