officers being supplied with the Medical Register, issued annually by the Council; but these gentlemen, while appreciating the suggestion, were unable to hold out any hope that it would or could be carried into effect, inasmuch as the Government are unwilling to incur the necessary expense, and as the Register is too inaccurate to be implicitly relied on in doubtful cases. But now that medical men are required, under a penalty for neglect, to give certificates of the cause of death, some means ought to be found of restricting the use of them in any form, to registered practitioners. The sub-district Registrars do not knowingly accept a certificate from a non-qualified practitioner, but in some cases where a medical title is used by a stranger, “invalid” certificates obtain currency. In all other irregular cases the registrar returns the death as “not certified,” making use, nevertheless, of the information as to the cause of death contained in the certificate! If it were made an offence at law for any unregistered practitioner to give a certificate of death, the difficulty would probably be met. At present I do not know what course would be best to adopt, unless to hold inquests on the bodies of all persons who die under the treatment of non-qualified practitioners. This course was adopted in some cases in the northern part of the parish last year, and it led, in at least one instance, to the unsatisfactory, not to say discreditable result, of the Philadelphian M.D. who attended a sick child, calling in a registered practitioner at the last gasp, so that he might certify to the cause of death. An inquest, however, was held on the body, and the death was found to be due to quite a different disease to that entered in the certificate. I may add that the Board of Guardians, laudably anxious to put a stop to the scandal, took proceedings at the Hammersmith Police Court against an unregistered practitioner for signing a vaccination certificate, and thus “falsely pretending to be registered.” The case was dismissed, however, and no further steps have been taken in the matter. But something should be done for the protection of the poor, who are almost exclusively the patients of the unqualified man, being unable to realize the distinction; and action is rendered the more necessary by the fact that children—infants of tender age—are most commonly the victims of the practice. Thus, of the 33 cases of uncertified deaths referred to, 25 were children, of whom 18 were less than one year old. The causes of death returned included such diseases as typhus fever, scarlet fever, measles, diarrhœa, inflammation of the lungs and of the brain, and scrofulous maladies. METEOROLOGY.