A SANITARY OUTLOOK 367 



tion. There should, it seems to me, be maintained, in connection 

 with all great cities, a series of broad avenues converging towards them 

 from all the points of the compass, free from buildings, and covered 

 with vegetation. The parks and open spaces in our cities are called 

 their lungs, but the lungs are not of much use without the windpipe, 

 and the green avenues I suggest would act in that capacity, and allow 

 an inrush of fresh air and the escape of the vitiated air which is always 

 accumulating in cities. These avenues, I have said, should be clothed 

 in vegetation, and to my thinking the preservation of vegetation, not 

 only around our great cities, but throughout the country generally, is 

 becoming a matter of grave import. Sir James Dewar once calculated 

 that a healthy man evolves on the average about 200 pounds of carbon 

 in the form of carbonic acid annually, and as an acre of the best culti- 

 vated land fixes annually about 2,200 pounds of carbon, it follows that 

 one acre of land can economize as much carbon as is supplied by eleven 

 persons. The Crystal Palace covers an area of sixteen acres. If the 

 atmosphere had to be kept pure by interior vegetation, without external 

 ventilation, it could not permanently contain more than 365 persons 

 without an increasing aerial contamination. But the vegetation in 

 the large Crystal Palace, this island of ours, is being constantly reduced 

 in amount. Enormous tracts of land once cultivated have been appro- 

 priated by highways and railways, and works and habitations, and at 

 the same time there has been an enormous increase in the output of 

 carbonic acid and the demand for oxygen by combustion in the con- 

 sumption of fuel by manufactures of all kinds and for domestic pur- 

 poses and by the respiration of animals and human beings. The re- 

 vivification of the air by home industry is gradually decreasing, and 

 the day may come when we shall be entirely dependent on imported 

 oxygen as well as imported food, and will have to trust to the ocean 

 to dispose of our surplus carbonic acid. At present the air of our 

 large towns and especially those with narrow streets and towering 

 buildings is often a very deleterious compound. 



It is to the rise of the suburb — the island suburb — set in a sea of 

 chlorophyll easily accessible, well planned, honestly built, that we must 

 look in the first instance for the removal of some of the afflictions that 

 overcrowding has brought upon us. But the suburbs, while it may do 

 much, can not do everything, and there are other sources of relief, which 

 it is our duty to turn to and to improve. We must take measures to re- 

 duce the influx of population into our already congested towns, and to 

 keep on the land those who have been born and brought up on it and to 

 bring back to the land those who have inconsiderately left it. Beyond the 

 city and its satellites, we must afford to those who are weary of the 

 dirt, confinement, dreariness and ugliness of over-crowded quarters, 

 room and opportunity for healthy, moral and physical life. And there 



