NOTES ON THE AIR OF BRISTOL, AND ITS ANALYSIS. 535 
immediate attention of the trade, as licences have to he obtained from the local autho¬ 
rity, which, in York, is the Board of Health Committee. 
“Your Committee would recommend the Annual Dinner to take place at the King’s 
Arms Hotel, on Tuesday the 23rd inst., and hope to have a good attendance of Members 
to join in the festivity.” 
Appended is the usual statement of accounts for the past year, showing a balance in 
hand of £Q. 13s. 3d. 
Expenditure. 
£ s. d. 
To Postages, Stationery, Meetings, 
Sundries, and Annual Dinner . 9 13 4 
Balance in hand . 6 13 3 
£16 6 7 
Signed— G-eokge Dennis, Chairman. 
Thomas Cooper, Treasurer. 
John Brown, Secretary. 
York , February 5th , 1869. 
Receipts. 
£ s. d. 
To Balance in hand and Subscriptions, 
1868 . 16 6 7 
ORIGINAL AND EXTRACTED ARTICLES. 
NOTES ON THE AIR OE BRISTOL, AND ITS ANALYSIS. 
BY W. W. STODDART, F.G.S., F.C.S. 
{Abstract of Paper read before the Bath Pharmaceutical Association.) 
After a few introductory remarks the author said that any one living in a 
town, and who had visited the habitations of his poorer brethren, must have 
noticed the close atmosphere, the animal odour, and the indescribable “ some¬ 
thing ” which oppressed his senses, and caused his respiratory organs to in¬ 
stinctively rebel. 
It is also very singular that the smell pervading a town house is distinctly 
different from that in a country cottage. 
All this had attracted the attention of the author, who during the last eight 
or ten years had made a series of analytical experiments, the results of which 
were laid before the meeting. 
The constantly drinking bad water poisons the human frame in the most 
direct manner, and the author thought that breathing impure air was not less 
dangerous, although the ill effects may be more indirect in their progress. 
Moral as well as physical depravity will inseparably be found in the man who 
cares little for fresh air in his dwelling; both his person and his mind become 
equally “ dirty.” 
The atmosphere is a wonderfully perfect provision of our Creator for the 
continuance of our well-being ; and as its purity and free access to every living 
creature are absolute necessities, equally wonderful and perfect means are pro¬ 
vided for its purification, whenever it becomes charged with noxious gases, 
which otherwise would slowly but certainly shorten animal life. 
Nature’s great disinfectant, “the law of diffusion,” has been at work ever 
since the world began, preserving us in health and strength. 
Our mode of living in what we term civilized life is the cause of half the ills 
that flesh is heir to; bad drainage and close rooms form a hotbed for epidemics, 
which by their very presence show man to be the dirtiest of animals. 
By a diagram it was shown that the existences of plants and animals were 
mutually dependent upon each other; both are furnished with organs for 
sustaining life by receiving food and rejecting that which has been used up, so 
that the normal balance may be sustained. 
