In the earlier months of 1849 there was greater privation and suffering among the population of the western and south-western districts, than at any time since the fatal season of 1846-7. “Exhaustion of resources by the long continuance of adverse circumstances, caused a large accession to the ranks of the destitute. Clothing had been worn out or parted with to provide food, or seed in seed-time; and the loss of cabins and small holdings of land, either by eviction or voluntary abandonment, rendered many thousands of families shelterless and destitute of fuel as well as food.” The distress hence arising, aggravated by the inclement weather which then prevailed, was not we are told effectually met by the system of out-door relief. Where the workhouses were full, poor persons receiving out-relief were often compelled to part with a portion of their food to obtain a lodging. The cabins became crowded with ill-fed, ill-clothed, sickly people, and epidemic disease found victims prepared for its attacks. A great proportion of those who died in the workhouses at this period, had previously suffered from fever and dysentery, and entered the workhouse weakened by extreme privation, or in an advanced state of disease. [Sidenote: Cholera breaks out.] In the month of March a new enemy appeared, cholera having broken out in the western and south-western unions, whence it afterwards extended to other parts of the country. The disease however assumed its most virulent form in the above unions, and proved extensively fatal to the inmates of the workhouses, as well as to the population generally. Great exertions were made to check its ravages; but the commissioners express their regret that a want of means had crippled their efforts, and in some urgent cases they had been obliged to apply for permission to appropriate a limited portion of the funds placed at their disposal by government, to provide the means of treatment for cholera patients, at a time when they were anxious to apply every sum remitted to them to the purchase of food for the in-door and out-door poor in the distressed unions. After a time the cholera disappeared from most of the unions in the west and south, but at the date of the Report it still prevailed with much virulence in other parts of Ireland. [Sidenote: Extent of relief and mortality.]