Three years later, the condition of county and borough asylums was, with few exceptions, satisfactory, and declared by the Commissioners to be very creditable to the governing bodies and superintendents. Improvements had taken place in many of these institutions, and there was found to be a more general recognition of the humanizing and beneficial influence of cheerful and well-furnished wards, on even the most degraded patients. "Those at one time considered to be fit only to be congregated together in the most dreary rooms of the asylum, with tables and benches fastened to the floor, and with nothing to interest or amuse them, are now in many asylums placed in wards as well furnished as those occupied by the more orderly patients, with birds, aquariums, plants, and flowers in them, and pictures on the walls; communicating also with such wards are now very generally to be found well-planted and well-kept airing-courts. The less strict classification of the patients is also advantageously followed in many asylums, and in them what are termed "refractory wards" are properly abolished. Where arrangements for this purpose have been judiciously made and carried out with energy, the best results have followed, in the way of an improved condition and more orderly demeanour of those disposed to be turbulent, whilst the comfort of patients of a more tranquil character has not been prejudicially affected. The use of mechanical restraint in county and borough asylums, unless for surgical reasons, such as to prevent patients removing dressings or applications to wounds or injuries, or during the forcible administration of food, is, with few exceptions, abolished. In thirty-eight of the fifty-four asylums visited during the past year, there was no record whatever of its employment. In the cases of twenty-two patients, distributed over ten asylums, it had been resorted to for the above-mentioned reasons, and in six asylums it had been used to counteract violent suicidal or destructive propensities; the number of patients restrained for these latter reasons (exclusive of Colney Hatch and Wandsworth) having been one in the Macclesfield, nine in the Glamorgan, six in the Prestwich, and one in the Norwich Borough Asylum. In the Wandsworth Asylum it will be seen from the Report that, during a period of about sixteen months, thirty-three men and twelve women were recorded as having had their hands restrained by gloves for destructive propensities; and four males and one female had worn restraint dresses at night, two on account of their suicidal tendencies, and one for violence. At the visit to Colney Hatch, a very dangerous male epileptic was found restrained by wrist-straps and a belt, and from the register it appeared that he had been thus constantly restrained during the day for a period of nine months. Ten other male patients were also recorded as having been restrained; one having had his hands fastened, and the