MISCELLANY. 



635 



following inquiries, and promises to give 

 the results obtained at some future meeting 

 of the association : 



" 1. Have you personally ever known any 

 ease where thorough-bred short-horn cattle, 

 because of climate, poor feed, neglect, or 

 any other cause, have become in character 

 any thing else than short-horns in other 

 words, where from any cause thorough-bred 

 short-horns have degenerated into animals of 

 any other breed or type ? 



" 2. Do you personally know of thorough- 

 bred animals of any other breeds so chang- 

 ing or reverting ? 



' 3. Have you ever heard of such a thing 

 taking place, in the experience of other 

 breeders, so well authenticated that you be- 

 lieve it to be a fact ? " 



The professor concludes his circular with 

 the following remarks : " That grade ani- 

 mals often ' revert,' that curious freaks 

 and ' sports ' often attend violent crossing 

 (and also that breeds deteriorate under bad 

 management or bad conditions), are well 

 enough known, but these facts do not affect 

 the specific questions asked where the blood 

 is supposed to be kept strictly pure.''^ 



Laborers' Domes. Dr. Stephen Smith, in 

 an address to the New York Public Health 

 and Dwelling Reform Associations, points 

 out various methods of improving the homes 

 of the laboring classes in this city. He holds 

 that every family almost may own a house 

 for itself, and instances the city of Philadel- 

 phia, where tenement-houses are unknown, 

 and where the day-laborer may, and does, 

 occupy a house which is, or is in process of 

 becoming, his own property. In the city 

 of New York, south of the Harlem Eiver, 

 it is impossible for the poor to build houses, 

 unless there be such a reconstruction of the 

 land as will diminish the cost of individual 

 lots, and allow of a larger number of single 

 houses to the acre. Dr. Smith favors the 

 plan of single rows of dwellings fronting at 

 both extremities upon streets. Blocks thus 

 laid out would have no inclosed courts, the 

 dwellings would be flushed with free cur- 

 rents of air on both sides, and a much larger 

 number of people could be accommodated 

 in the same area. 



The system of building associations, 

 such as exist in Philadelphia, is highly 



commended by Dr. Smith. The relation 

 of the laborer to the building association 

 is thus stated: "He borrows $1,000 in 

 cash, agreeing to pay $1,200 and the in- 

 terest ; he stands charged with $1,200, 

 paying $00 per annum : it would take 

 twenty years to pay up $1,200. But at 

 the end of the time, his share being worth 

 $1,200, he stops paying, and the house is his 

 own. In fact, however, he is a participant 

 in the profits, the premium and the interest 

 he pays going to reimburse himself, and it 

 only takes in practice ten or twelve years 

 to put him in absolute possession of his 

 home." Dr. Smith's address is worthy the 

 attention of all classes; it is published in 

 full in the Sanitarian for July. 



In London, too, there exist various asso- 

 ciations whose object is to provide improved 

 dwellings for the laboring classes. At the 

 present time these associations own 7,558 

 improved dwellings, capable of containing a 

 population of 36,0*78. The buildings have 

 been erected at a cost of about $6,000,000, 

 and the enterprise is an undoubted financial 

 success. But regarded from the sanitary 

 and moral point of view the results are still 

 more satisfactory. That the moral well- 

 being of the inhabitants is promoted by 

 the enlarged provision made in the model 

 lodging-kouses for the decencies of life is 

 self-evident. The sanitary advantages pos- 

 sessed by these dwellings will be seen from 

 a comparison of their death-rate witli the 

 death-rate of England in general, of Lon- 

 don, or of any district of London. " There 

 is not one year," says the Sanitary Record, 

 " in which the death-rate prevailing in the 

 model lodging-houses is not much lower than 

 in England, and in the country, city, and 

 town districts with which it is brought into 

 comparison. Take, for instance, the healthy 

 year 1868 ; it shows a death-rate in the 

 model lodging-houses of 15 per 1,000, the 

 most favorable figure for any mixed popula- 

 tion of male and female being 22 a dif- 

 ference of 7 per 1,000 in favor of the model 

 dwellings." It is a very significant fact that 

 whereas in 1874 the death-rate of children 

 under ten in the general population of Lon- 

 don was 48 per 1,000, in the lodging-houses 

 it was only 24 per 1,000. And the saving 

 of disease must be in the like proportion. 

 But yet in these dwellings the population is 



