Water-Closets as conveniences are so necessary, and in their proper construction are so important to our comfort and health, that we think any research into their history will repay us by increasing our knowledge on the subject.

It will be necessary in this paper to review, cursorily, other modes of convenience in countries where, and at times when, water-closets properly speaking were not in use.

Naturally, we first examine the ruins of Egypt, where existed the earliest traces of civilization, for remains of water-closets. The small private and detached rooms which we find in the remains of Egyptian houses were probably used as privies. Ewbank, in his work on hydraulics, calls the summer chamber of Eglon, king of Moab, a water-closet.

If we thought proper to follow the example of Ewbank we would call water-closets the private rooms which were in an isolated position in one of the halls, being near a door communicating with the other chambers. Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson says: "These rooms bear a striking resemblance to the before mentioned private room of Eglon."

That the Greeks made use of privies in their houses is proved by an old writer from a passage in Aristophanes (Ecclesiaz., verse 1050). This was about four hundred years before Christ.

The Romans, if not the first in art, the leaders in all that pertained to luxury and comfort, were the first, as far as we can ascertain, to use water-closets. In Rome we find four kinds of receptacles for excreta. Close stools (lasana) , in which the rich ancients sometimes used gold or silver bowls; vases (gastra) which were stationed on the roadways; public privies (cloacina) , of which Sir William Gell tells us there were one hundred and forty-four in Rome; privies (latrina), probably for private use.

From their derivation we would infer the two classes last mentioned to be water-closets, cloacina being derived from cloaca, a sewer or drain, and latrina being a diminutive of lavatrina, a wash-bowl or basin. No doubt, as at the present day, the name included the room as well as the basin or receptacle contained in the room. Pompeii was covered with ashes and lava by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius more than eighteen hundred years ago, and among its ruins were found the most perfect remains of an ancient water-closet. Pompeii being a small town and a province of Rome, we would suppose the water-closets to have been more numerous and more elaborately ornamented in the capital city.