One great advantage of this form of construction of flooring and terraced roofs, is the entire absence of nooks and crannies which can harbour vermin, for even the equally massive roofs of concrete, laid on flat tiles supported by a system of beams and battens, afford most dangerous refuges for disagreeable intruders, and I well remember an inmate of my house being put to intense suffering on two successive nights by vermin that fell from such a roof; the first disturber of our rest being an enormous centipede, and the second a hornet. For the same reason, all cornices and similar architectural adornments are distinctly to be deprecated. The roofing materials generally employed in tropical countries are thatch, tiling, terraced constructions, and corrugated iron. Thatch is, from many points of view, an excellent material, as while it favours ventilation by being extremely pervious to air, it gives excellent shelter from rain, and is quite unequalled as a protection against the sun; in addition to which it does not, to any appreciable extent, throw out into the house during the night the heat absorbed during the day. With all this, it has great and, it is to be feared, preponderating disadvantages, the principal of which is that it forms a perfectly ideal refuge for vermin of all sorts, vertebrate and invertebrate. As a rule, owing to the high pitch necessary in this form of roofing, the lower edge of the roof is rarely more than a few feet from the ground, and owing to the usual existence of creepers, trellises and similar facilities, is usually easily accessible to any animal endowed with the most moderate powers of climbing. Owing to this, such roofs are usually honeycombed with the nests of squirrels, rats, civet cats, and half wild domestic cats, to say nothing of snakes, and birds and other flying things. The large empty space between the ceilings and the rafters is usually alive with bats, and as all this extensive population is quite without any system of conservancy, an old thatched roof is simply permeated with guano; and the emanations from this necessarily find their way into the house, and indeed are always plainly perceptible in a thatched house that, for any reason, has been shut up for any length of time. Besides this, the substance of the thatching is always slowly decomposing under the slow action of mildew, and this adds further musty exhalations to the bouquet. Hence, if used at all, the thatch should be completely renewed at frequent intervals, and its employment should be confined to situations which cannot be scaled by large vertebrate vermin. Where it is used, the interior of the rooms should be completely cut off from the cavity of the roof by some fairly impervious ceiling, such as one formed of match-boarding, and not, as is commonly the case, by a “ceiling cloth” of ill-stretched canvas.