204 GLIMPSES OF NATURE. 



districts, the difference of death-rate is at the rate of 

 9.24 per 1000 per annum. If, now, the population of 

 typical London is set down at 2,767,298, we discover 

 that 25,559 lives are thus annually lost in consequence 

 of the conditions which prevail in this dense centre of 

 mankind. No less startling is the fact that of every 

 1000 infants born (I quote from my author once again) 

 1 1 2 more die under fifteen years of age in urban 

 London than in the healthy districts. 



Enough of figures, however ; and I know that my 

 readers will remind me that " London is, after all, the 

 healthiest place of any." I reply, on the whole it is 

 for those who can afford to purchase the best of life's 

 conditions. The healthy London of which my friends 

 speak is a selected London ; and their argument is 

 therefore a very one-sided one, after all is said and 

 done. I say to those who argue for healthy London 

 that they represent (the healthy units, I mean) the sur- 

 vivors of a very tremendous general mortality. They 

 are the favoured few who escape, by reason of their 

 affluence, the dangers and degeneration which beset 

 the many. It is the old story over again of the visitor 

 to the slums of a city, who said to his guide that the 

 gutter children looked fairly well and sturdy. " Yes," 

 replied the guide, " but these children play on the 

 graves of their thousand companions who have suc- 

 cumbed ; " and what is true of the children o"f the slums 

 seems to me to hold equally true of the population of 

 every big city we know. 



Is there any remedy, then, I may be asked, for this 

 degeneracy which accompanies city life ? The reply 

 bears that we may certainly do much to better the 

 existing state of things, and that according to plain 

 health laws. We want the State to take up the 



