The occurrence of black showers in this country has been observed during the present year, and I understand that in the fenny countries of the East, the corn has suffered much from the Uredo. I am not mentioning the circumstances as cause and effect, but merely to call attention to the fact, that unusual phenomena of this kind have been generally associated with disease of the animal and vegetable tribes. The same causes also predispose plants as well as animals, to epidemic attacks of disease. The repeated observations in the public journals on the subject of ventilation, drainage, and over-crowding, render all notice from me needless, to shew that these, though they do not produce the diseases {157} treated of, yet that under the influence of bad air, bad drainage, and over-crowding, epidemics are fostered and spread. Lastly, says the Count Philippo R['e], "I would remark that if _bad cultivation, and especially bad drainage, does not produce bunt or smut, it is certain that those fields, the worst treated in these respects, suffer the most from these diseases_." It has been remarked by many observers, that a greater fecundity has attended upon Pestilences, and this has been proved by comparison, that the births in proportion have far exceeded the ordinary limit.[62] In juxtaposition with this observation, I will place the following, not as a proof, but as a remark made quite independently of the subject of which I am treating. "From the first the diseased ears are larger than the healthy ones, and are sooner matured. What appears singular, but which I have not, perhaps, sufficiently verified, is _that the seeds are more abundant than in a sound ear_." {158} Now these are facts which require amplification, and if these two alone should be shewn upon an extensive field of observation, to apply not only to corn, but to other members of the vegetable kingdom, as I doubt not will be the case, though I am not fully prepared to prove it, it would be difficult to dissociate the fertility of the two living kingdoms from the operations of one and the same, or an analogous law.