Yet it is not the changes in the ground-water by themselves, just as it is not rainfall and temperature by themselves, that make enteric fever to prevail. The soil in which those vicissitudes of drought and saturation are potent for evil must be one that is befouled with animal organic matters, more especially with excremental matters. For that and other reasons (such as the geological formation), enteric fever shows, in its more steady or endemic prevalence from year to year or from decade to decade, certain marked preferences of locality. Since 1869, when the deaths from it began to be registered apart, it has been much more common, per head of the population, in the quick-growing manufacturing and mining towns than in any other parts of England and Wales, the districts with highest enteric death-rates being the mining region of the East Coast from the mouth of the Tees to somewhat north of the Tyne, the mining region of Glamorgan, certain manufacturing towns of Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire, and some districts in the valley of the Trent in Staffordshire and Nottinghamshire. The following Table shows, by comparison with all England and Wales and with London, the excessive death-rates from enteric fever in the registration divisions which head the list: _Highest mortalities from Enteric Fever in Registration Divisions of England and Wales_[404]. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Decennium | Decennium 1871-80 | 1881-90 -------------------------------------------------------|---------- | Annual | Annual | | |death-rate,|death-rate,|Enteric| Deaths, |all causes,| Enteric, |Deaths | Enteric, | per 1000 | per 1000 | in 10 | in 10 | living | living | years | years -----------------------|-----------|-----------|-------|---------- England and Wales | 21·27 | 0·32 | 78421 | 53509 London | 22·37 | 0·24 | 8536 | 7497 -----------------------|-----------|-----------|-------|---------- Durham co. | 23·77 | 0·56 | 4525 | 2590 South Wales | 21·09 | 0·45 | 3715 | 2550 W. Riding, Yorks. | 23·24 | 0·45 | 9166 | 5170 N. Riding, Yorks. | 19·68 | 0·44 | 1259 | 896 Nottinghamshire | 21·23 | 0·43 | 1707 | 1263 Lancashire | 25·17 | 0·39 | 12388 | 9874 _Durham Mining Districts._