Council represented the matter to the Board of Trade, who not only entertained the representation, but sent down an Inspector (Colonel Yollands), to inquire into and report on the whole circumstances, and thereupon decided not to approve of the plans so far as they interfered with the foreshore, unless the public wants were provided for. The Board of Trade thus gave effect to the views of the Council. I am glad to state that the Town Council of Edinburgh readily assisted Leith in this matter.

Now it may asked if the husbandman can with reasonable certainty estimate the increased value of his crops by the extent of the drainage and other means employed to improve his land, is it not equally practicable to estimate the return for the sums spent in draining the habitations of the inhabitants of our large towns, and the other means necessary to protect them, as well as others, from the ravages of disease and death? If the only difference truly be that the one is a private, and the other a public enterprise, it should be kept in mind that the principle is the same,-the wise expenditure of money for a definite object; and that the contributions of the many are at least as capable of producing safe results as those of the few, or a single occupier of land. The question is, are we, with the knowledge we possess as to the practicability of reducing the death-rate of the country, not culpably short-sighted if we hesitate to carry out those measures which will ensure that result?

The legislature has given the people a system of local government which leaves the means very much in their own hands. Can local authorities stop short, and allow the powers entrusted to them for the public interests to remain a dead letter? True it may be that the public are ever ready to grumble at assessments, be the object what it may, and no doubt it frequently requires a stout heart for the exercise of duty; but it is equally true that the public are ever ready to acknowledge in the end what is done for the public good. The onus which rests on local authorities is indeed serious, for the good which they can accomplish by a due exercise of their powers is, in the present state of the public health, almost incalculable. Let the watchword therefore be a reduced death-rate; and never let the cry cease until the rate is brought to its proper limits.

The Sanitary State of Newhaven. By the REV. W. GRAHAM. THE town of Newhaven is situated in the immediate vicinity of Edinburgh. Its population consists chiefly of fishermen with their families, numbering above 2,000 souls. The length of the town, which is formed of one main street, two squares, one back court, two wynds, and two back streets, is towards 300 yards, and its breadth from north to south, is towards 70 yards. Some of the "lands of houses," as they are called, with garret rooms, are three, four, and

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five stories high. Its situation is picturesque, and favourable to the best system of drainage, by the sea shore.

Ten years ago and from time immemorial-it was proverbially a very dirty place, with its old houses, very deficient in a sanitary point of view, and far too few in number for so large a population in such a limited area.

Its principal street, running east and west, was paved, for the first time, only thirty years ago, during the visitation of cholera. It was paved anew four years ago by the Cramond Road Trustees.

Before this was done the street was full of hollows, often filled with pools of water. Its sewers, in certain places, were often reddened with blood from a neighbouring slaughter-house, which on hot summer days occasioned very offensive smells, while ash-pits and night soil, and fish shells covered the edges of the foot-paths in all directions, so that to walk through the town with comfort was scarcely possible. Ten years ago there was not a gas-lamp to light its streets, nor scavenger to clean its sewers; nor water convenience in its houses, especially in its closes, while several of its older tenements had only one room, occupied sometimes with eight, nine, ten, and even eleven souls; such houses were too common ten years ago, and even yet several of its houses at the present moment surround a little churchyard in its centre, the back walls of which old houses form the old churchyard wall; so that when, seven years ago, interments took place in it, the sleeping dead on the one side of the churchyard wall, were on a level with the sleeping living on the other side of the churchyard wall; in other words, the level of the churchyard earth is three and four feet above the level of the floor of the dwelling-house. I need not say that the back walls of these houses being the churchyard walls, are necessarily damp and unhealthy looking; and if you add to this the fact of the floors of some of these old houses being several inches lower than the street level, and remember the surface nuisances in these closes within the last ten years, the wonder is, people could live in such dwellings, and enjoy any degree of health.

Such is an imperfect picture of Newhaven ten years ago; very dirty, and often much afflicted with measles, scarletina, diphtheria, typhus, dysentery, diarrhoea, and, twice or thrice, with cholera.

When I began my ministry there, I saw, from such a state of things, that in addition to attending to my other spiritual duties, it was necessary for me to do something for the bodily health and social welfare of the people, and generally for the sanitary improvement of the town; I therefore set myself steadily, midst good and bad report, to this work, and now, through the hearty co-operation of the Rev. Mr. Fairbairn and other philanthropic friends of all denominations, it can be said with truth to-day, that Newhaven, in its physical aspect, is the opposite of what it was ten years ago.

We began the sanitary reform of the place by voluntary efforts; we appointed a cleansing and paving committee; raised subscriptions and made sewers down either side of the square, towards the sea;

erected a number of gas lamps, and cleared the streets of surface nuisances. At first we encountered much prejudice.

Some of the fishermen, ill-advised, took the promoters into the Court on the ground "That the surface nuisances belonged to the Fishermen's Society, and ought not to be sold by the cleansing committee, even to pay the expenses of their removal." An office bearer of the Fishermen's Society told me, "That to promote health by cleaning the town was absurd. For look," he said, "the healthiest men in Leith and Edinburgh are the scavengers." Another said "If you light the town with gas lamps the consequence will be, you will drown some of us. For, when we rise at three or four o'clock in a dark, stormy, winter morning to go to the fishing, the lamps will 'blear oor een,' and we may step on to a wave when we think we are stepping into a boat."

Thus, ten years ago, the prejudices of many, were, as a whole, in favour of the then existing state of things-dirt and darkness. But now, as a whole, their prejudices are in favour of cleanliness in the streets, and light.

Last winter these voluntary reforms were supplemented, and finally crowned, by the introduction into Newhaven, Trinity, and Wardie, of Provost Lindsay's Police Act, with its effective cleansing, lighting, and watching. But, I believe, had such police regulations been introduced ten years ago as were introduced last year, there would have been something like a small rebellion; whereas, through the gradual training of the population to clean streets and improved dwellings, the introduction of Provost Lindsay's Act was a matter of comparative ease.

Four years ago, about £200 was spent in the re-pavement of the main street, £50 of which sum had been subscribed by the leading inhabitants. About the same time, the erection of a new row of fishermen's houses, with modern conveniences in each, took place. They were built on the principle of each man becoming his own landlord. Each house has three apartments in it-a kitchen, a room, and a closet, and sometimes a garret room. There are twenty-four houses in the row of this description, accommodating twenty-four families.

The interior of these new houses is a treat to look at, because of their tidiness and neat arrangement; and the bulk of the families are already their own landlords.

In building the houses the fishermen got pecuniary aid from an Edinburgh building society-and a good herring fishing, the summer they entered them, helped many of them to pay off their debt the first year.

This new row led others to go and do likewise, and last year another block of eight houses were built on the same principle, and were either bought or rented by fishermen; and this year in Annefield and in Newhaven there have been built on the same plan, thirty-six houses, which are also sold and occupied by fishermen either as landlords or as tenants, and at present twenty-four other houses are being built, making

in all-on the principle of each man becoming his own landlord of houses built, or being built, in Newhaven, for the fishermen within the last few years-ninety-two new houses, accommodating ninetytwo families, or, in all, about 600 souls.

But the first new row of houses has not only led to the building of those just mentioned, it has induced landlords to tear down some old buildings, and reconstruct new houses; and also to repair others capable of being repaired. Still, with all these new houses built, and others re-built, or repaired, there is yet much room for more being built-for some old ones still standing, to be torn down and built anew-and for the old churchyard-which has been shut up for seven years-being remodelled as to its surface-its upheaved earth being removed from the sides of the walls of the surrounding dwellinghouses, and placed more in its centre; as well as for the removal of the slaughter house, and the building of places of public convenience, to prevent the accumulation of night soil, so offensive, and so hurtful to public health.

Cotemporaneous with these material and sanitary improvements in Newhaven, permit me to mention two things which prepared the way for the fishermen entering so readily on the plan of building houses with modern conveniences in them for themselves. The first of these was the establishment of a children's savings bank. second, that of a co-operative store.

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In January, 1854, a lady, one of our Sabbath school teachers, began a children's savings bank, in connexion with the day and Sabbath schools. It is open every Thursday afternoon, and now also every Monday evening. There two and three hundred children deposited their weekly pennies, and at the end of the first year, there had been put into it by the children £139 10s. 9d. As soon as the advantages of the bank became known to the parents of the children, they began next to avail themselves of it, and the progress it made is shown by the fact, that in 1860 £815 16s. 3d. was paid in; after which year, it was made a national Security Savings Bank. Last year the number of depositors, old and young, was above 300; and the aggregate amount paid in 1862 was £1,275 4s. 1d. I mention these things for the purpose of stating this fact, that the parents of the children who had most money in the savings bank, were amongst the first to enter on the plan proposed to them, of building the first new row of fishermen's houses, through the aid afforded them by one of the Edinburgh Building Societies.

In January 1857, a Fisherman's Co-operative Store was also commenced, which has been a great success, and has also aided materially in helping on the building of the new houses, and thus sanitarily improving Newhaven. It has led to habits of providence amongst the fishermen, and has given them business habits, by which they can more accurately manage their own affairs. This co-operative store owes its existence chiefly to Mr. Hughson, the first Scottish Coast Missionary in the district.

At first, there were thirty shareholders in it, holding amongst them

ninety-nine shares, at 5s. per share, or a capital to commence the store of £24 15s. Now, there are 101 shareholders in it, holding amongst them 257 shares, of 5s. per share, or a capital, to carry on the store, of £64 5s. They began the store in a house rented for the purpose. Now, through their own profits, amounting to £917 of capital-including £375 of house property-they occupy a commodious shop of their own. Their drawings, the first year, were £843 1s. Their drawings, last year, were £4,057 16s. 84d. They divide each year one-third of the profits, and the balance goes into a sinking fund, to the credit of the Society.

There are no spirits sold in "the store;" but everything else is, that a fisherman and his family require. Those fishermen who hold shares in this co-operative store, and who are depositors in the Newhaven savings bank, are chiefly those occupying the better houses in the locality, and are amongst the most pious and respectable in the parish.

Within these last few years it has been a matter of remark how few infectious diseases now afflict Newhaven. Last year, when smallpox, in many parts of Leith and Edinburgh was doing its deadly work, comparatively few deaths-only some three or four-occurred in Newhaven, and these happened in houses not new, but old, and in anything but a healthy state, either as to pure air or pure water.

As a whole, it may therefore be said, with truth, that there exists a new Newhaven-in a physical sense-within the last ten years. The spirit of material improvement has strongly set in with the precision and the progress of an advancing tide.

THE CAUSES WHICH MODIFY THE PUBLIC HEALTH.

How People may Live and not Die in India. By FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.

A

MEETING of the Social Science Association is surely the place to discuss one of the most important of social questions, viz., how the British race is to hold possession of India; and to bestow upon its vast populations the benefit of a higher civilisation.

The first part of the question is for the present the most important. For, if it be impossible to keep possession of the country, there is an end of the problem.

The Royal Commission on the sanitary state of the army in India, whose two folio volumes of report and appendix constitute a new social starting point for Indian civilisation-has shown that, unless the health of British troops in India can be improved, and the enormous