neutralize the offensive and deleterious effects which the exhalations produced, while, on other occasions, their injurious influence has been abundantly manifested by the change induced in individuals subjected to their influence on removing to another atmosphere. No grievance, perhaps, entails greater physical evils upon any district than the conjoined influence of bad drainage and crowded churchyards; and until the drainage of air from drains shall be secured by the process adverted to in another part of this work, or some equivalent measures, they cannot be regarded as free from a very important defect. The drainage of air from drains is, indeed, desirable under any circumstances; but when the usual contaminations of the drain are increased by the emanations from a loaded churchyard, it becomes doubly imperative to introduce such measures; and if any one should desire to trace the progress of reaction by which the grave-yards are continually tending to free themselves of their contents, a very brief inquiry will give him abundant evidence on this point. My attention was first directed to this matter in London ten years ago, when a glass of water handed to me at an hotel, in another district, presented a peculiar film on its surface, which led me to set it aside; and after numerous inquiries, I was fully satisfied that the appearance which had attracted my attention arose from the coffins in a churchyard immediately adjoining the well where the water had been drawn. Defective as our information is as to the precise qualities of the various products from drains, church-yards, and other similar places, I think I have seen enough to satisfy me that in all such situations the fluids of the living system imbibe materials which, though they do not always produce great severity of disease, speedily induce a morbid condition, which, while it renders the body more prone to attacks of fever, is more especially indicated by the facility with which all the fluids pass to a state of putrefaction, and the rapidity with which the slightest wound or cut is apt to pass into a sore. Mr. Leigh, surgeon and lecturer of chemistry at Manchester, confirms the researches made by Dr. Reid in that town, and observes on this subject—