the establishment of a large sewage farm at Saltley. The latter was first undertaken and found to be a solution of the difficulty, and in the year 1877 the other object was attained by the constitution of the “Birmingham Tame and Rea District Drainage Board,” composed of twenty-two representatives from the different governing bodies in the drainage area, of whom twelve are elected by the Town Council of Birmingham. To this body the sewage farm has been transferred, and is now carried on with the most beneficial result. Immediately after the passing of the Public Health Act, 1872, the Borough was constituted an Urban Sanitary District and the Council as the Urban Sanitary Authority, set itself vigorously to the work of improving the public health. A Borough Hospital for the treatment of small pox and scarlet fever was established in 1874. The Public Health Act, 1875, indirectly removed for sanitary purposes the limit on rating powers to which the Council were obliged to submit in their Act of 1851. By the zealous labours of the Health Committee, and the liberal application of the pecuniary resources placed at its command by the Act of 1875, the death rate has been reduced from 24.8 per 1,000 in 1874 to 19.1 in 1885, although the mean density of the population has increased in the same period 20 per cent. In 1851 the first of the four sets of public baths was opened in Kent Street, followed by other sets in Woodcock Street (1860), Northwood Street (1862), and Monument Road (1883). Under the management of the same Committee of the Council are placed the ten public parks and recreation grounds of the Borough, of which five have been given to the Corporation and five have been acquired by purchase. The list is as follows:--