[4] I suppose it was this impurity of the water which produced a remarkable disease among the young sticklebacks and minnows, many of which I have found with deposits, apparently of pus, on various parts of their bodies, rendering their movements languid and awkward, and in some cases, especially where these deposits were on the head, causing hideous disfiguration. _Victoria Park Bathing Lakes_.—There are two of these lakes. The more easterly one is nearly 300 yards long, and is surrounded by a gravel walk, beyond which are shrubs. The more westerly one is nearly as large, and is more hemmed in by trees and shrubs, and has several islands in it. Both have a depth of 6 feet in their deepest part, becoming gradually shallow towards the shore. The eastern lake is much the clearest. There is a raft on one, and a small shabby bathing house on the other. A swimming master resides at one end of the eastern lake, who apparently adds to the profits of his profession by selling ginger-beer and sugar-plums. The time when bathing is allowed is from 4 to 8 a.m. The remainder of the day the best of the lakes is much resorted to by the owners of miniature yachts, in order to test the sailing powers of their tiny craft. There is, of course, here also no arrangement for the safe bestowal of one’s clothes while one is in the water, so that, as in the Serpentine, you bathe at your own proper peril. The lakes in these two parks are the only places in which the inhabitants of London are permitted to indulge in open-air bathing.[5] To be sure there is the river, and there are numerous canals in which the gamins plunge in summer, but they do so at the risk of being seized by the police and brought before a magistrate charged with the heinous offence of indecency, so that all who have any respect for the law are practically debarred from making use of these waters. Besides, in spite of the recent drainage works, the Thames is still little better than an open sewer, and it will be long before it is anything else;[6] and the canals are, with few exceptions, so dirty, that there is little inducement to the respectable swimmer to brave the terrors of the law, and defy the threats against trespassers, in order to indulge in his favorite exercise in either river or canal. So, practically, he is limited to the Serpentine and Victoria lakes, and to these only at the inconvenient hours, and under the uncomfortable circumstances I have described.