thoroughly mastered by any local magistracy. The very authorities who should stamp out the abomination are likely enough to be the evil-doers themselves, or are at least so compromised by surrounding influences as purposely in this particular to neglect the interests of the community. Besides, to put existing and not very distinct laws in motion, a heavy expense is liable to be incurred. And local authorities of all kinds do not like to encounter litigation unless strongly urged by public clamour and backed by persons of note, who do not mind to take trouble and share part of the cost. We apprehend that no effectual remedy is obtainable in present circumstances.

The true corrective would be to assign the conservancy of the atmosphere and of rivers to officers directly appointed by and responsible to the crown. To this opinion has come Dr Richardson, one of the most eminent promulgators of the laws of health. In a recent lecture on the subject at the Royal Institution, he says very pointedly: 'In the future of sanitary science, the politician must come forward more resolutely than he has done, in order to secure for those he governs three requisites—pure water, pure food, and pure air. It is utterly hopeless to trust to companies in a matter of such vital importance as the supply of water. It is equally hopeless to trust to the undirected action of local authorities.' Proceeding to state that a remedy can be found only in the official action of a supreme authority, he says: 'As to pure air, there is no practical legislation of any kind. The air of our large towns is charged with smoke and impurity. The air of our great factories is charged with dusts which destroy life with the precision of a deadly aim. Dr Purdon, one of the certifying surgeons under the Factory Acts, reports that in flax-working factories under his care, the carders, who are all females, if they get a carding-machine at sixteen years, generally die at thirty years. Could anything be more terrible than such a fact, that a girl of sixteen should have to live by an occupation that will bring her existence to an end in fourteen years, and to that end with all the prolonged wasting, sleeplessness, suffering, incident to the disease consumption of the lungs? If it were the fate of these doomed workers that at the close of fourteen years' work the majority of them were taken forth and shot dead in an instant, their fate were infinitely better than it is. The heart of the nation would thus be aroused, and the law in all its majesty would be put in operation to arrest the progress of the crime and to punish the offenders. Yet, year after year as terrible an offence goes on, and because the result of it is hidden in the sick-room, there is no arrest of its progress, no punishment for its commission.'

In the same lecture, Dr Richardson speaks with equal vehemence on the too prevalent practice of polluting rivers and wells by the influx of sewage from large towns and various kinds of public works, dye-works in particular. Here, again, the action of local authorities is generally hopeless. Magistrates and town councils will complacently see a river flowing past them loaded with impurities. 'The government,' he says, 'must either produce a process or processes for pure water supply, and insist on every local authority carrying out the proper method; or it must—and this would be far better—take the whole matter into its own hands, so that under its supreme direction every living centre should, without fail, receive the first necessity of healthy life in the condition fitted for the necessities of all who live. By recent legislation we had some security for obtaining fresh animal food, and foods freed of foreign substances or adulterations. The penalties that might be inflicted on those who sell decomposing, diseased, or adulterated foods were beginning to have effect, and much good was resulting.' Similar regulations ought to be applied to water. The fouling of rivers by sewage must be rendered penal. What horrid ideas arise on the consideration that a large part of the population of London are daily using the water of the Thames, into which has been poured the sewage of Oxford and a number of other places! The Clyde below Glasgow offers an example of still greater pollution; but its very badness saves it from use for domestic purposes; and in point of fact this fine river, for the improved navigation of which so much has been done, can now scarcely be spoken of as anything else than a gigantic common sewer, on which ships of large burden are borne to and from the sea. The Irwell at Manchester offers a specimen of an impure river of a different type. Here much of the pollution seems to arise from the liquid refuse of dye and other works. The last time we saw the Irwell, it had all the appearance of a sluggish river of black ink. Its colour, however, is liable to change with the predominating dye-stuffs which it happens to receive. The droll remark is made, that boys who indiscreetly take a fancy for bathing in it are apt to come out blue. Its condition and qualities were some time ago commemorated in a few comic verses in a newspaper, of which a cutting was sent to us. We give them as being too clever to be lost sight of.

SONG OF THE IRWELL.

We trust that the concluding threat of remaining for ever a poisonous and fetid river is not true of the Irwell any more than the Thames or the Clyde. The subject of river-pollution, as of air-pollution, is too serious to be much longer neglected, and we trust that government, setting aside private, selfish, and factious interests, will soon deal with it in as peremptory a fashion as constitutional forms will admit. As concerns the pollution of the air by smoke from factories, there is not a vestige of excuse. We have shewn again and again with, we fear, tiresome reiteration, that the consumption of smoke is a very simple mechanical process, and has the advantage not only of keeping the air unpolluted, but is