TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 209 
7. Inspectors of Nuisances.—These should correspond respectively with the 
superintendent medical officer of health and the local medical officer of health, and 
should be under the control of these officers. 
Now, how are these officers to be appointed and paid? All the inspecting 
officers should be appointed and paid by the state. All the local officers should be 
appointed by the local authorities, but with the consent of the central authority, 
and should be paid partly by the local rates and partly by the state as at present, 
or (what I should prefer) the whole service for the United Kingdom should be 
made a public health Civ Service of the state. 
8. Analysts.—The appointment of public analysts has rather fallen into disrepute 
of late ; and no wonder, considering the curious nature of the appointments. 
VY. Constant supervision by the central authority. 
It is scarcely necessary to write more upon this point, as the inspecting medical 
and engineering officers will secure this. 
VI. Security for a certain amount of independence for the local officers from the 
local authorities. 
This will, I think, be amply secured by the constant supervision and the 
arrangements for payment and appointment. If the service was made a State 
Civil Service, the independence would be complete. This security for inde- 
pendence is a matter of more importance than most people think. It may not 
unfrequently happen that the offender against sanitary law will be a member of the 
local authority. 
On Postal Reform. By W. Hastrnes. 
Reference made to the paper read at the Bradford Meeting proposing an imme- 
diate adoption of one penny as a sufficient rate for a single letter between any two 
post-offices, however distant which have a regular uninterrupted communication. 
As one penny is sufficient where there is transit in addition to the service of 
two post-offices, one eighth of a penny should suffice for mere stamping, sorting, 
and delivery; and if this were combined with hourly deliveries from 8 a.m. till 
eyening, a traffic which has now no existence, but which would be an immense 
boon to the public, would soon arise, and the lowness of the postage would draw 
into the post-office a host of printed matter, circulars, cards, and advertisements 
which are now almost invariably sent out by special messengers. 
The plan of hourly delivery was adopted in 1766 in Edinburgh by a Mr. Peter 
Williamson, and was so successful that the post-office gave him a pension to give 
up his venture. 
The success of omnibus traffic, which depends on frequency and punctuality, is 
a warrant, in the author’s opinion, that if his plans were adopted with letters it 
would have a like success. 
Reclamation and Sanification of the Pontine Marshes. 
By Dr. Henry MacCormac. 
A multitude of publications have appeared on this important matter, among the 
rest Prony’s “ Marais Pontins” and Dr. Balestra’s “ Poche Parole sul Risanamento 
dell’ Agro Romano” in the ‘ Archivio di Medicina,’ Rome, 1873. If things go on 
as they are doing, observes Secchi in his ‘ Sulle Condizioni Igienice del Clima di 
Roma,’ we need have little hesitation in prophecying that Rome must become an 
oasis in the midst of a pestiferous desert, the prey of desolation (“ preda della 
desolazione”’). The tracts variously termed Pontine Marshes (Maremma, Campagna, 
Agro Romano) extend some few hundred miles along the Italian shores, occasion- 
ally penetrating twenty miles into the interior, from Cecina in the north to Terra- 
cina in the south. The alluvium from the Apennines, in the course of ages, has 
formed apparently this low-lying, naturally fertile, but otherwise most insalubrious 
tract—once, Pliny states, occupied by more than thirty cities, but now lying waste 
and desolate. Even so recently as the fifteenth century it was comparatively popu- 
lous; a few hired labourers and overseers, however, excepted, with the harvesters 
who come down from the hills, the district at present is deserted. Various Pontitis, . 
