of Edinhiirgli, Session 1883-84. 
629 
returns. During the ten years ending 1870 the coldest month was 
January, when the deaths, amounting to 69,206, reached their 
maximum, while the smallest number occurred in September, viz., 
50,342. On the other hand, during the six preceding years (1855-60), 
both February and March proved colder months than January, and 
produced the highest mortality, viz., 36,917 and 36,525 deaths 
respectively. As in the later period, however, the mortality was 
lowest in September, when the deaths numbered 27,110. The 
effect of great heat upon bowel complaints and kindred diseases has 
been repeatedly pointed out. The relative deaths, however, are not 
generally sudden, the sufferers frequently lingering for several 
weeks ; and accordingly many of the deaths are not recorded till the 
autumn. The influence of season upon phthisis and several other 
ailments is more or less marked ; while in the case of diseases of 
the digestive and urinary organs the same effect is comparatively 
imperceptible. 
In Ireland and elsewhere the scarcity and consequent high price 
of food has frequently exercised a powerful influence on the national 
mortality; but in Scotland, at least during recent years, no such 
effect has been noticed. On the contrary, while in 1868, with 
wheat at 63s. 9d. per quarter and potatoes at 137s. 6d. per ton, the 
deaths amounted to only 69,416, during the following year, when 
wheat had fallen to 48s. 2d. and potatoes to 99s. 6d., the deaths 
reached the high number of 75,875. Eesults somewhat similar 
were presented in the mortality tables applicable to the years 1866 
and 1867, when prices considerably differed. 
It is hardly necessary to refer to the influence of epidemics on the 
public mortality, more especially cholera, smallpox, influenza, scarlet 
fever, and measles, from most of which we have been comparatively 
free for a good many years. 
Lastly, the nature of the occupations of the inhabitants of any 
district has no inconsiderable effect upon the number of deaths — 
miners, fishermen, and the followers of other hazardous avocations 
being specially subject to untimely ends. In consequence of the 
frequent explosions in coal-pits, or the results of severe gales, the 
death register of many a rural parish, with a moderate average 
mortality, is obliged to be largely augmented. Thus, of the 247 
deaths recorded in the parish of Blantyre in the last quarter of 
