122 PROCEEDINGS OF THE SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION. 
comes within the province of the Borough Council, and it is 
for that Board to see what can be done in the matter. 
The drainage of private yards is an object of greater im» 
portance and difficulty. As I have already observed, many 
lots are naturally drained into the adjacent ones. This 
should not be allowed, and measures should be taken to 
cause the grounds to be so raised as to throw the water into 
the adjoining thoroughfare, and the General Board of 
Health ought to make orders to that effect. 
Surface rain-water is a source of moisture only during 
six months of the year ; but the water supplied from the 
water-works is, under present circumstances, a permanent 
source of dampness in many lots and nearly all our streets. 
Few persons are aware of the great evil arising from the 
habit, so general in this town, of allowing water to run to 
waste from the service pipes. In many tenements there is 
no arrangement for the drainage of that water* which causes 
excessive dampness. Generation of effluvia is much less to 
be apprehended during the wet than during the dry season : 
during the latter small pools of dirty water become so many 
focuses of malaria, the united emanations of which poison 
the atmosphere of the town. Soap-suds are allowed to 
escape from many yards into the streets ; they loosen tho 
pavement, impregnate the soil with impurities, and assist 
the growth of weeds. Soap-suds contain a large propor- 
tion of animal matter from dirty clothes, the decomposition 
of which gives rise to sulphuretted hydrogen, a most dele- 
terious gas. 
Strange to say there is in the law for supplying Port-of- 
Spain with water, no provision against the evil of which I 
complain, and in consequence the supply, though abun- 
dant, may be said to be scantily distributed. I suggest 
