born ill Lisbon, whose streets were open sewers and its 

 atmosphere noted for its impure taint. Other Portuguese 

 towns had the same character, as had also the towns of 

 Italy and the Rhine. Yet in all these cases the deaths from 

 typhoid fever did not compare unfavourabl}^ with those in 

 English towns supposed to be decently drained and under 

 some sanitary supervision. The moral from this seems to 

 be that domestic sewage is not harmful unless diluted, and 

 that the evils of typhoid fever first became critical when 

 water closets were substituted for privies. If human ex- 

 cretions were allowed to decay naturally without the 

 addition of water, as they did in the old privies and still do 

 in continental towns in the open streets, however noisome 

 the smell may be there is apparently little fear of fever. 



He also thought that the notion of ventilating the miles 

 of drains of a large city like Manchester by means of a few 

 tall chimneys with fires at their bases was chimerical. 

 There is no continuous draught in the drains, this being 

 broken by the many grids in the streets. Now, by the 

 ordinary laws of pneumatics it follows that if the street be 

 cold and the house warm, there is a continuous current of 

 tainted air passing on to the pantry and the closet from the 

 drain, the fresh air being supplied at the open grid. The 

 remedy that suggests itself is first to discover which classes 

 of sewage are innocuous, and which are liable to fermenta- 

 tion leading to the formation of fever germs, and to separate 

 the latter, and allow them either to dry by themselves or to 

 apply earth or ashes so that fermentation may be pre- 

 vented. 



Mr. K D. Darbishire, F.G.S., gave an account of a re- 

 markable discovery of prehistoric relics in Ehenside or Gibb 

 Tarn, near Braystanes Station, near St. Bees, Cumber- 

 land. 



He introduced the subject by recapitulating the classifi- 



