There is one subject that bears a most important relation to the health and comfort of those over-crowded dwellings, and that is the supply of water. This is anything but adequate to the requirements of the many people that are sheltered under one roof in my district. The tubs and cisterns are in many cases only sufficient to supply one family, but in the houses where the poor live, each room is occupied by one or two families at the least; the consequence is, that there is a great demand for water, and not being sufficient, impurities of all kinds abound; personal cleanliness is neglected to a frightful extent, washing the skin is looked upon as a terrible innovation, and the result is often dreaded. To suggest a bath is often looked upon with as great a horror as a surgical operation. If there were a more plentiful supply of water, there would not be the excuse for such a neglect of washing and cleansing the dwellings of the poor. Personal cleanliness and the washing out of rooms, &c., is the duty of the tenant quite as much as paying the rent. It would be well if cleanliness were made a condition of tenancy,—if the rent collector insisted on the cleanliness of the rooms with the same firmness that he insists on the punctual payment of the rent, yea, rather allow a week’s rent to stand over than a dirty room to go unwashed. The sewerage to the houses is not adequate to carry off the enormous waste of fifty people. These houses were only built for the accommodation of fifteen to eighteen people. If there be not a sufficient supply of water to flush the drains at least once a-day, they become clogged up and generate poisonous gases, which enter the houses and bring on a lowered state of health; skin diseases, scabies, typhus, and choleraic diarrhœa are the results. That this is not an overstatement may be shown by the fact, that outbreaks of choleraic diarrhœa have over and over again been suddenly stopped by a heavy fall of rain. This beneficial result has come about by the rain flushing the sewers and clearing off the morbid poisons.