CONDITIONS INFLUENCING PREVALENCE 205 



Most of them have arisen from the growth and amalgama- 

 tion of a number of contiguous villages, and strips and 

 islands of the old rural area are commonly left between the 

 more closely packed houses of the old village sites. The 

 only "up country " city, indeed, with which lam personally 

 acquainted which at all approximates to the conditions of 

 our large European towns is Benares, but even there the 

 back streets and lanes are mostly unpaved, and I have 

 found puddles teeming with Anopheles larvae in the very 

 heart of the sacred city, though most of these were fed from 

 the municipal hydrants, the untoward effects of which have 

 already been noticed in coiniection with the effects of water 

 supply on malaria. 



Fortunate indeed it is that such is the case, as, malaria 

 or no malaria, the value of thaBe breathing spaces is in- 

 calculable, for a continuous mass of houses such as form 

 our large European towns, inhabited by a population of 

 oriental habits, would be a perfect hot-bed for the breeding 

 of plague and other bacterial infections. 



Outside the bazaars, or business quarters, continuous 

 lines of houses are rare. In residential neighbourhoods, 

 owing to the necessity for privacy imposed by their social 

 system, each house is a hollow square of which one or more 

 sides are usually simple walls of no great height. As not 

 only the human inmates, but commonly also cattle and 

 horses, have to be accommodated, the size of this inner 

 court even in modest households is often considerable, and 

 the residences of well-to-do citizens have often considerable 

 gardens. The latter form ideal breeding places for mos- 

 quitoes of all sorts, but the domestic puddles of the more 

 usual enclosures are generally far too foul for the larvae of 

 even the none too fastidious An. Rossil, though C. fatigans 

 breeds in abundance about them. 



The anti-malarial influence, then, of town life is less 

 marked in India than in Europe, but it is nevertheless, I 

 am inclined to think, quite perceptible, for though no 

 reliable statistics are available, most officers who have been 

 engaged in our civil medical administration appear to have 

 a general impression that their towns are less feverish than 

 the districts surrounding them. 



