376 THE AIR OF TOWNS. 



Deed point no moral; but before bringing it to a close I have one 

 suggestion to make. Those who have followed my lectures thus far 

 will, I am confident, agree with me as to the serious importance 

 of tbis subject of town air from the nature and extent of air pollu- 

 tion here in the town of Leeds, its marked effect upon the life of 

 its citizens, especially of its working population, and its effect on 

 vegetation, and indirectly, therefore, on the possibility of purifying the 

 atmosphere. 



Our medical officers in their weekly or quarterly returns usually 

 include a certain amount of interesting and useful information about 

 the weather, the temperature, and the barometer readings. These 

 weather statistics have their value in relation to epidemic and endemic 

 disease. I do not wish to underrate them. But how vastly more impor- 

 tant is it for us to know the extent of our air pollution. And the mat- 

 ter carries still further weight from the fact that the weather is beyond 

 our control, but the purity of our town atmosphere lies in our own 

 hands. We want our experimental stations, our watcktowers, within 

 and outside the town, where the condition of the atmosphere may be 

 constantly tested, where with every new progressive step in air purifi- 

 cation we may mark the effect on the atmosphere as well as on the 

 health of the citizens. This need be no costly undertaking. Three or 

 four intelligent lads of 15 or 16 with a good board-school training 

 under the control of the city analyst or other competent chemist could 

 manipulate all the necessary apparatus, which in itself, as you have seen, 

 is simple and inexpensive. 



One word more. Ruskin, as Collingwood in his biography relates, 

 kept for fifty years careful account of the weather and effects of cloud. 

 He noticed that since 1871 there had been a prevalence of chilly wind, 

 but different in its phenomena from anything of his earlier days. " The 

 plague wind," so he named it, " blew from no fixed point of the com- 

 pass, but always brought the same dirty sky in place of the healthy 

 rain cloud of normal summers." 



This " eclipse of heaven " Ruskin regarded, if not as a judgment, at all 

 events as a symbol of the moral darkness of a nation. In whatever 

 light we are inclined to regard Rus kin's opinions, he has ever been 

 admittedly a most careful and trustworthy student of nature. May not 

 this '• eclipse of heaven " be the effect of our town smoke, which we kuow 

 is perceived at a radius of 10 miles, and probably extends many times 

 that distance from some of our large towns. I can not doubt that the 

 total effect of the millions of tons of smoke sent yearly into the atmos- 

 phere of the United Kingdom must modify in some degree the charac- 

 ter of our climate. 



We ought, however, to take courage from the fact that, if we can not 

 get pure country air in town, a vastly purer atmosphere is within easy 

 reach if we would only grasp it. Then we may begin to think seriously 



