With respect to the burial-grounds within the City, which will fall into disuse so soon as the new Interment Act becomes operative, I trust that your Hon. Commission will procure the power of regulating and supervising their maintenance, so that they may no longer be hurtful to the health of their vicinity. The arrangement of them, which would be most advantageous to their locality, would be that of planting them with whatever trees or shrubs may be made to flourish in a London atmosphere. The putrefactive changes, which for some years longer must proceed in these saturated soils, will be rendered comparatively harmless and imperceptible, if at the same time there advance in the ground a sufficiency of vegetation, which for its growth would gradually appropriate, as fast as they are evolved, the products of animal decay. It seems almost superfluous for me to observe, that, from the time when burials are discontinued, no unnecessary disturbance of the soil should be allowed; nor any attempts at levelling or the like, except under the direct sanction of your Hon. Court. Another point in connexion with these burial-grounds, to which I may here advert (though I must recur to it hereafter) is, that while great advantage may be expected from the discontinuance of their former uses, if their several areas be left open and without building, so as to subserve the ventilation of their neighbourhood, all that advantage would be lost, and a heavier evil inflicted on the neighbourhood than that of which it purports to be relieved, if these spaces were at any time to be covered with houses; and I trust it may be found within the province of your Hon. Court to obtain authority for preventing any encroachment of this nature on the limited breathing-spaces of the City. _Habitations and Social Condition of the Poor._ In my last Report (under its fifth and sixth heads) I particularly solicited the attention of your Hon. Court to certain circumstances connected with the dwellings and habits of the poor, which, though they then lay apparently out of your jurisdiction, as defined by the Act of Parliament, yet appeared to me of immeasurable weight in the sanitary fluctuations of the City, as tending in their operation constantly to thwart your endeavours for improvement, and to neutralise day by day whatever good you could achieve.