464 The Public Health. [July, 



The deaths during the above quarter of the present year were 

 at the rate of 26*7 per 1,000 per annum, against 36'8, the rate that 

 prevailed during the relative time last year. 



This recent improvement although most marked during, was 

 not confined to, last quarter, for the first ordinary ^quarter of the 

 present year ending March 30th presented also a favourable con- 

 trast to the corresponding quarters of 1865 and 1866. The 

 number of deaths registered during the first quarters of 1865, 1866, 

 and 1867, being respectively 1,788, 2,095, and 1,700. 



The above result furnishes a strong argument for earnest sani- 

 tarians to persevere in the good work of endeavouring to prevent 

 unnecessary disease and death, and still vigilantly to guard the 

 watch-tower from which public oj)inion makes itself felt and heard, 

 for it would be idle to suppose that the foregoing description of 

 some of the work achieved in Leeds is anything beyond the mere 

 commencement of effort to be pursued in a large field of labour, 

 and it must not be forgotten that the public mind still requires 

 educating on common sanitary laws, and that the public attention 

 still needs directing to the importance of building model houses 

 for the poor, public abattoirs, mortuaries, &c. 



Dunkelt). — Most of our readers will have tarried at this inter- 

 esting town, who have passed it on their way to the Eastern High- 

 lands of Scotland, and little would they dream that a spot so highly 

 favoured by nature, should be so utterly degraded by man, as it 

 would appear to be from the following extracts from a paper real 

 by Dr. John Adamson, of St. Andrew's, before the Philosophical 

 Institute of that city : — 



" Dunkeld," he says, ■ is a town of Perthshire, situated on the north bank of 

 the Tay, in the corner of an irregular natural amphitheatre, surrounded by hills 

 varying in height from 1,000 to 1,500 feet. When this open space among the hills 

 is estimated by the eye, it appears to be less than two miles at its greatest length, 

 by half-a-mile in breadth ; and viewed pictorially, it doubtless is a beautiful site 

 for a small town. It is luxuriant with vegetation, and studded with wooded 

 knolls and handsome villas, growing into a second town near the railway station. 

 The river Tay passes through it, with grassy flats and fine old trees upon its 

 banks ; while the whole is enclosed within a background of woods and rocks 

 and heather, rising high around it on picturesque-looking hills. The miniature 

 town, too, when looked at in the same merely pictorial light from the middle 

 of the bridge, or from the opposite river bank, is not unworthy of its site. It 

 is a cluster of white-walled, blue-slated houses, nestled among trees beside its 

 old oathedral church; and with the wooded hills behind, and the broad river 

 flowing towards it through the green lawns and the graceful foliage of the Athole 

 grounds, it exhibits, in a single view, a combination of scenic beauties in their kind 

 which oan rarely be equalled. 



" But this town has another aspect in which there is no beauty. It is situated 

 upon a level space of small area, between the river and a wooded hill, with trees 

 encroaching upon the houses. The space towards the river is divided into back 

 courts and narrow gardens, by walls and hedges. Streets stand at right angles to 

 each other ; and a few houses of more than one storey in height, are crowded into 

 lanes and courts behind the streets. Drainage to the river is only partial ; wells 

 within the town indicate the absence of natural drainage ; while the surface. 



