( ni ) 
many of tliese water reservoirs fall off, or fail altogether, after a certain 
number of days of clrouglit ; and the water supplied is limited in 
quantity, and often deteriorated in quality, for the constant undiluted 
impurities become more and more noxious eveiy day to man and 
beast. The first lesson of the summer season is the urgency of 
providing ample storage for the flood-waters about the river- heads, 
and for the rain-fall on houses, so as to equalise the distribution 
over the daj's of the year. The second lesson is the necessity of 
measures for the removal and interment of every kind of ferment- 
ing impurity. The diarrhajas, choleras, and analogous diseases, 
which spoil the enjoj'ment of the finest summers, will then be as 
rare in those daj's as the early migrating birds ; for, finding nothing 
to feed Ttjion, they will infest our cities and villages no longer. 
In the fourth quarter of the year the great centres of population in 
the north of the kingdom made a bad return. Why should indus- 
triotis, prosperotis, and wealthy communities see their people perish 
year after year at excessively high death-rates without trying some 
radical and effectual measures of reform ? There appear to be dis- 
putes as to the particular measures to be adopted, and while these 
^ire going on the people are dying off at high rates. Why should 
not experiments be at once made in various blocks of houses ? The 
water supply is an excellent preliminaiy, but the sewers must 
follow. The refuse must be day by day removed from the dwell- 
ings, and this the householder cannot himself accomplish in large 
towns. It is municipal work. 
aiETEOEOLOGY. 
TJiird Quarter {July, August, September). The weather during the 
whole quarter was of the same character as in the preceding- 
quarter, viz., remarkably fine and wann. The month of July was 
excessively warm ; on the 22nd of this month the thermometer in 
the .shade rose to 96-6°, the highest temperature of the air ever 
lecorded at Greenwich. In the beginning of August the tempera- 
ture was high ; on the 5th the maximum temperature was 90J°. 
The mean for the month was high, but not remarkably so ; it was 
63*6°. The month of September was warm throughout, particularly 
at the beginning ; the mean for the month was 3 '4° above the 
average. The mean temperature of the three months was 63'9^ — a 
result which has never been recorded in any corresponding quarter 
for 98 years. 
At the end of the month of July the harvest was progressing in 
almost every part of the British Isles, and in some of the southern 
districts was brought near to completion. Harvest came in suddenly 
A 2 
