1885.] The Limits of Sanitary Reform. 151 
circumstances as regards health than was the case at the 
beginning of the century. We must admit this fadt, unless 
we are prepared to deny the progressive depopulation of the 
open country and the concentration of the people in the 
great cities. This means a relative increase of men doomed 
to occupations either sedentary, or, if involving physical 
activity, still exercised in the absence of a sufficiency of 
light and fresh air. 
It is only from this point of view that we can realise the 
true meaning of the present agricultural depression. Every 
thousand acres of land thrown out of cultivation, or laid 
down to permanent pasture, means so many men and 
women driven from the free air of the country to the slums 
of London, Liverpool, Glasgow, and the like. Perhaps one 
of the noblest tasks which a true statesman could undertake 
would be to devise a remedy for this desertion of the open 
country. But our professional politicians of both parties 
look on in “ sick stupidity ” while the deadly game 
proceeds. 
Mr. James Cantlie, in a lecture recently delivered at the 
Parkes Museum, has uttered a sound of warning. He took 
for his subject the “ Degeneration amongst Londoners.” 
Now if we bear in mind that London contains about one- 
eighth part of the population of Britain, and that our other 
large towns — where the vital conditions are essentially simi- 
lar — raise the proportion to one-sixth, this degeneration is 
indeed a hand-writing on the wall. 
Mr. Cantlie is reported to have described London as “an 
ozoneless region, where exercise in fresh air is impossible to 
obtain, and where the sun’s rays are deprived of all health- 
giving power.” The supposed effedls of ozone, or of its 
absence, we are not about to discuss, since its existence in 
the atmosphere has not been proved with sufficient precision. 
But the difficulty of obtaining exercise in, or even mere 
access to, fresh air we fully admit. Nor can we deny that 
the sun’s rays, even in the suburbs, differ both in quantity 
and quality from those poured out upon the open fields. 
The lecturer defines the normal Londoner, whose degene- 
racy he discusses, as one whose parents were born in London 
and spent their days there, and who himself has had the 
same unhappy destiny. It is, of course, obvious that num- 
bers of the inhabitants of London do not fall within this 
category. Leaving out of consideration the higher classes, 
on the one hand, and the vagrant nomadic population on the 
other, who spend a part of each year only in the great city, 
we have further to exclude soldiers and sailors, who may be 
