624 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
days there has been experienced a temperature equal to that 
of India. Several persons have been prostrated with sun¬ 
stroke, and perished during the week, and among others two 
poor little children, left in a perambulator by a careless 
nurse-girl in the sun. To follow the ordinary avocations of 
life has been a most weary and irksome task; men, women, 
and children seemed almost to gasp for breath. In the 
House of Commons, especially in the committee-rooms, 
which face the river, the temperature was something fright¬ 
ful, as every crevice through which air could be admitted 
was stopped up, in order to exclude the pestilential odour of 
the Thames. In one of the courts of law the presiding judge 
could endure the heat no longer; he dashed his wig from his 
head, and invited the members of the bar to follow suit. In 
the country the effect of the high temperature has been most 
marvellous. The crops, which ten days ago were quite 
green, are now ready for the sickle; in fact, in many parts 
harvesting is in full operation. The most serious results of 
the hot weather, however, are to be found in the greatly in¬ 
creased rate of mortality, especially in the metropolis, during 
the week ending the 1 (5th instant. The deaths in that week 
amounted to 1,400; in the three previous weeks they had 
been respectively 970, 1,024, and 1,226. The average rate 
of mortality during the past ten years in the corresponding 
week was 1,100. The comparison, therefore, gives a most 
unfavorable result, as it shows that the deaths in the present 
return are higher by 300 than the number which the average 
rate of mortality for the second week in July should have 
produced. Diarrhoea has been unusually fatal.” 
As was to be expected, animals likewise suffered greatly from 
the extraordinary elevation of temperature which prevailed,and 
particularly those depastured in exposed situations, where little 
protection could be afforded by shade. Many cases of sudden 
death occurred; the postmortem examinations showing the 
vessels of the meninges of the brain turgid with blood, and 
also the cavities of the heart tilled to repletion with soft and 
dark-coloured coagula. The most serious consequences, 
however, of the long-continued heat are still being expe¬ 
rienced in the loss of lambs. For many weeks these animals 
have been dying by scores, especially in several of the 
eastern counties, so as to threaten, in some instances, the 
loss of the whole flock. Their death is usually preceded by 
wasting, an ill-conditioned state of the wool, irregular bowels, 
fastidious appetite, pallid membranes, and husky cough. 
They thus gradually “pine away,” to use an agricultural 
expression; no ordinary treatment sufficing to arrest the 
