From the year 1781 down to 1789, epidemic pestilence committed great havoc in various parts of the world. In England, an epizootic was fatal to horses and horned cattle: of one hundred and sixteen horses located in one barrack stable, all but thirteen were attacked; seventy-eight died. The Channel fleet were great sufferers from epidemic disease; 11,732 sick were sent to Haslar Hospital; 1457 had scurvy; 240 dysentery, and 5539 suffered from severe fever. This may be taken as a specimen of the health of the British navy down to the close of the eighteenth century. Epidemic puerperal fever, about this period, was very fatal in London. Measles raged in New York, Philadelphia, and in other parts of the United States; and numerous cases of hydrophobia occurred in the more southern States. In the month of July the weather was so hot that the thermometer in the shade stood at 103°. In the state of Maryland there was great mortality among horses and horned cattle; and fish at this period died in vast quantities on the coasts of Lapland and Norway. A.D. 1782, in the month of July, there was a dreadful fire at Constantinople, which destroyed upwards of 7000 houses; and in the following month, a similar catastrophe caused the destruction of 20,000 more, many lives being lost: from the consequent crowding together of the inhabitants, and from other suffering, famine and pestilence followed. The epidemic pestilence which attacked the Bengal troops the year previously at Garigani, extended to Sir E. Hughes’ squadron then stationed in the East, and caused great mortality. The inhabitants of the provinces of Languedoc and Roussillon were attacked with a terrific epidemic, which caused great devastation. The governor of Catalonia, in consequence of the great mortality, sent Dr. Masdevall to inquire into the character of the epidemic, whether it was, as it was publicly reported to be, the true plague, and whether it was or was not contagious. Earthquakes during this year were frequent in Calabria; they continued from time to time for four years, until the end of 1786, producing many fissures, landslips, lakes, ravines, falls of the sea-cliffs, and other changes, which taken together afford one of the finest examples of the complicated alterations which may result from a series of subterranean movements, even though of no great apparent violence at the time. During this calamitous period, the city of Messina in Sicily was destroyed, and 40,000 persons perished by an earthquake; the city of Thessalonica suffered from a similarly severe shock. A most intense frost commenced this year in England on Christmas-day; it continued until the end of February in the following year. A frightful epidemic broke out in the city of Lerida, which ran rapidly through the extent of Tarragona, Manresa, Llasanes, Solsona, Igualada, and Villafranca del Panades; it soon after prevailed over nearly the whole of Catalonia. Pestilence broke out also in Tortosa and