The business architecture of Belfast is unusually fine and in striking contrast to the rest of Ireland, where there has been very little building for a century. Belfast, however, is a distinctively modern city and up-to-date. There are no skyscrapers, and the limit of height seems to be six stories, but there is considerable architectural display; and the shopping streets are entirely modern, with large and attractive show windows. You hear a great deal about the weather of Ireland, and I have already quoted an old and common joke that it never rains on the 31st of February. People never go out without an umbrella or a mackintosh, because it is always safer to carry them. It rains in the most unexpected way. The clouds gather very suddenly and the predictions of the weather bureau cannot be taken seriously. But the natives don't seem to mind it. They are so used to getting soaked that it is a matter of no consequence, and over in the shipyards and elsewhere we saw men working on through a pouring rain without taking the slightest notice of it. Women who are compelled to weather the storms frequently line their skirts with rubber cloth or leather so as to keep their underclothing dry, and every man carries his mackintosh over his arm when he leaves home in the morning. [Illustration: Albert Memorial, Belfast] The official reports show that in the year 1907 rain fell on 232 out of the 365 days, and in 1906 there were 237 rainy days. In October, 1907, there were twenty-nine rainy days; in December, twenty-seven; in May, twenty-two; but in September there were only nine rainy days, which might be called a drought. In 1906 January had twenty-nine rainy days, August twenty-four, April twenty-three, and November and December twenty-two each. The average annual rainfall for the last forty years has been 33,523 inches. The highest temperature in 1907 was 79.8 degrees in the shade, and lowest, on the 30th of December, was 19 above zero. Belfast is a very healthy city, however, the death rate averaging about twenty per one thousand. It has been very much reduced during the last fifteen or twenty years by the improvement of the water supply and sewerage. The birth rate is very high and has sometimes run up to thirty-seven per one thousand of population. Last year it was thirty-one per one thousand. On Saturday and Sunday nights we saw a good many drunken men upon the streets. But I am told that there is a great improvement in this respect in recent years. The Orange associations of Protestants and the Hibernian and other friendly societies of Roman Catholics are both taking an active part in temperance work, from economical as well as moral motives, because they realize how much misfortune, poverty, sickness, and death--all of which increase their assessments--are due to drink.