re-enacted in 1840 by 3 & 4 Vict. c. 85-An Act for the Regulation of Chimney Sweepers and Chimneys. This last-named Act contains the following provision :

VI. And whereas it is expedient for the better security from accidents by fire, the improved construction of chimneys and flues provided by the said Act be continued; be it enacted, that all withs and partitions between any chimney or flue, which at any time after the passing of this Act shall be built or rebuilt, shall be of brick or stone, and at least equal to half a brick in thickness; and every breast-back and with or partition of any chimney or flue to be built or rebuilt shall be built of sound materials, and the joints of the wood well filled with good mortar or cement, and rendered or stuccoed within; and also that every chimney or flue hereafter to be built or rebuilt in any wall, or of greater length than 4 feet out of the wall, not being a circular chimney or flue 12 inches in diameter, shall be in every section of the same not less than 14 inches by 9 inches; and no chimney flue shall be constructed with any angle therein which shall be less obtuse than an angle of 120 degrees, except as is hereinafter excepted; and every salient or projecting angle in any chimney or flue shall be rounded off 4 inches at least upon pain of forfeiture, by every master builder or other master workman who shall make or cause to be made such chimney or flue, of any sum not less than £10, nor exceeding £50; provided nevertheless that notwithstanding this Act chimneys or flues may be built at angles with each other of 90 degrees and more, such chimneys or flues having therein proper doors or openings not less than 6 inches square.

By the Metropolitan Fire Brigade Act, 1865—28 & 29 Vict. c. 90-it is provided :

he may

23. If the chimney of any house or other building within the metropolis is on fire, the occupier of such house or building shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding 20s.; but if such occupier proves that he has incurred such penalty by reason of the neglect or wilful default of any other person, recover summarily from such person the whole or any part of the penalty he may have incurred as occupier.

The penalties imposed by the 14 Geo. III. are repealed. [FIRE PREVENTION.]

Chimneys on fire constitute a considerable per-centage of the "calls" made to the Fire Brigade. [FIRE CALLS.] CHINA.-China claims to be the oldest even of Asiatic nations; but of its early hist. we know very little. In 1710 its pop. was estimated at 27,241,129; in 1757 at 190, 348,228. In 1812 an official census was taken by order of Kia King. The pop. was found to be 367,632,907, giving a density of 283 to the square mile. In 1860 the pop. was estimated at 414,607,000; in 1867 at 450,000,000. Various other enumerations are said to have taken place. Dr. Bowring considered (1855) that "our greater knowledge of the country increases the evidence in favour of the approximate correctness of the official document. The Laws of China make provisions for a general system of registration, and punishment is awarded to those who neglect to regis. The machinery is confided to the Elders of the district, and a census should be taken annually.

The populous aspect of the country has been noticed by many writers. Among the first was Father Alvares Semedo, whose Hist. of China was pub. in Lond. in 1655, and who says:

This kingdom is so exceedingly populous, that having lived there two-and-twenty years, I was in no less amazement at my coming away than in the beginning at the multitude of the people. Certainly the truth exceedeth all hyperboles, not only in the cities, towns, and public places, but also in the highway there is as great a concourse as is usual in Europe on some great festival. And if we will refer ourselves to the General Register Book, wherein only the common men are enrolled, leaving out women, children, eunuchs, professors of letters and arms, there are reckoned of them to be 58 millions, 55 thousand, 1 hundred, and 4 score.

An earthquake throughout China occurred in 1662. It is stated to have buried 300,000 persons in Pekin alone. In 1731 another earthquake occurred which is said to have destroyed 100,000 in Pekin, and 80,000 in a suburb.

The enormous river pop. of China, who live only in boats-who are born and educated -who marry, rear their families, and die—who, in a word, begin and end their existence on the water, and never have or dream of any shelter other than its roof, and who seldom tread except on the deck or boards of their Sampans-show to what extent the land is crowded, and how inadequate it is to maintain the cumberers of the soil. In the city of Canton alone it is estimated that 300,000 dwell upon the surface of the river; the boats, sometimes 20 or 30 deep, cover some miles, and have their wants supplied by ambulatory salesmen, who wend their way through every accessible passage.-Bowring. The constant flow of emigration from China, contrasted with the complete absence of migration into China, has further been regarded as a striking evidence of the redundancy of pop. They crowd all the islands of the Indian Archipelago; they spread over the South Seas; they reach Australia, and penetrate to the West Indies. California has long formed a considerable outlet for them; they are rapidly spreading over the entire U.S. In 1822 nearly the entire city of Canton was burned. The lightness of the materials used in construction renders the towns peculiarly liable to destruction by fire.

In 1848 Hong-kong and neighbourhood was visited by a violent typhoon. Immense damage was done to the shipping; upwards of 1000 boat-dwellers on the Canton rivers were drowned.

In 1855 Dr. Bowring, then Brit. Plenipotentiary at Hongkong, communicated to our Reg.-Gen. a paper on the Pop. of China [printed in Statistical Journal, vol. xx. p. 41], from which some of the preceding facts are drawn. He says further :

While so many elements of vitality are in a state of activity for the reproduction and sustenance of the human race, there is prob. no part of the world in which the harvests of mort. are more sweeping and destructive than in China; producing voids which require no ordinary appliances to fill up. Multitudes perish absolutely from want of the means of existence-inundations destroy towns and

villages, and all their inhabitants; it would not be easy to calculate the loss of life by the typhoons or hurricanes which visit the coasts of China, in which boats and junks are sometimes sacrificed by hundreds and by thousands. The late civil wars in China must have led to the loss of millions of lives. The sacrifices of human beings by executions alone are frightful. At the moment at which I write it is believed that from 400 to 500 victims fall daily by the hands of the headsman in the province of Kwangtung alone. Reverence for life there is none, as life exists in superfluous abundance.

Infanticide, especially of female children, is one of the means employed towards lessening the redundancy of human life. The following is a somewhat remarkable decree of the Emperor Kanghi regarding this practice, which some writers have denied: Edict prohibiting the drowning of children.-When a mother mercilessly plunges beneath the water the tender offspring to which she has given birth, can it be said that it owes its life to her who thus takes away what it has just begun to enjoy? The poverty of the parents is the cause of this wrongdoing; they have difficulty in earning subsistence for themselves, still less can they pay nurses, and undertake all the necessary expenses for their children; thus driven to despair, and unwilling to cause the death of two persons to preserve the life of one, it comes to pass that a mother to save her husband's life consents to destroy her children. Their natural tenderness suffers; but they at length determine to take this part, thinking themselves at liberty to dispose of the life of their children, in order to prolong their own. If they exposed these children in some unfrequented spot, their cries would move the hearts of their parents: what then do they? They cast the unfortunate babe into the current of a river, that they may at once lose sight of it, and in an instant deprive it of life. You have given me the name of Father of the People; though I cannot feel for these infants the tenderness of the parents to whom they owe their being, I cannot refrain from declaring to you, with the most painful feelings, that I absolutely forbid such homicides. The tiger, says one of our books, though it be a tiger, does not rend its own young; towards them it has a feeling breast, and continually cares for them. Poor as you may be, is it possible that you should become the murderers of your own children? It is to show yourselves more unnatural than the very beasts of prey.-Lettres Edifiantes, vol. xix.,

p. 101-2.

Yet to be without children is almost regarded as a mark of reproach; or as Sir John Bowring puts it, "A childless person is deemed an unhappy, not to say a degraded, man. The marriage of children is one of the great concerns of families. Scarcely is a child born in the higher ranks of life, ere the question of its future espousal becomes a frequent topic of discussion. There is a large body of professional match-makers whose business it is to put all the preliminary arrangements in train. But severe laws prohibit marriage within certain degrees of affinity. So strong is the objection to the marriage of blood relations, that a man and woman of the same sing, or family, cannot lawfully wed.

Chinese fire engines are described as odd-looking machines. Each one is carried on a pole, by four men; the pole passing through the upper part. The engines consist of forcing pumps, worked by a double lever, the jet of water being projected through a brass nozzle about six feet long, working on a swivel from the upper portion of the pump. They have no hose, yet a very effective jet can be projected some distance. The great fault appears to be the rapidity with which the supply of water is exhausted. They have no suction hose, and have to be supplied with water from buckets, like the early fire engines used in Europe.-Young.

But if their engines are defective, their brigade arrangements in other respects seem very good. Dr. D. F. Rennie gives the following account of a fire he saw at Tientsin in 1862, and the means employed to extinguish it:

To-day we met a Chinaman with a sort of hand drum, beaten after the fashion of a child's toy. With this he was making a great noise, and while we were speculating what it meant some flames were seen on the opposite side of the canal near the French quarter, and a number of men coming down the opposite bank in line, with white flags and black letters on them. We concluded that they were connected with the police, and that the flags were to indicate the direction of the fire, which the beating of the drum was intended to announce to the neighbourhood. We accordingly followed, and soon reached the fire, which had settled on a cluster of houses up a narrow lane, in which fortunately close to the burning houses there was a vacant space. We had hardly got to it before a number of men bearing gaudy flags and standards arrived, followed in rapid succession by eight fire engines. . . . In a short time the inclosure was filled with flags of all colours and devices, tomtoms, gongs, etc.; the noise and general confusion which prevailed baffling description. Some sailors from a Russian gunboat, frozen in not far off, and a number of French soldiers, were actively employed on the roofs of the houses detaching the thatching and other combustible material. Fresh engines continued to arrive, and without heeding the direction, the moment they got into the open space they commenced discharging their contents towards the flames. One engine I saw playing right on the Russians and Frenchmen, with the thermometer 20 degrees below freezing. They seemed however not to mind it, but continued to work away with a right good will. As darkness began to creep on, the effect of the lines of flags and lanthorns was very picturesque. Taken altogether it was one of the gayest of sights I have seen in China, and not unlike a gigantic teetotal procession at home. The Tientsin fire brigade appears to consist of several sections, each of which has a distinctive uniform, and distinctive coloured flags. The engines were supplied with water from the Grand Canal, close to its junction with the Peiho, carried in buckets slung in the ordinary way from the end of a bamboo supported across the shoulder. In this way it was brought up from different parts of the canal, where the ice had to be broken for the purpose. The system of lighting by lanthorns was very perfect, and altogether the arrangements gave the idea of being wonderfully complete, more especially the wonderful rapidity with which the different sections of the fire brigade were on the ground with their engines.-British Arms in Northern China and Japan.

That ins. has long been carried on in China is well known-how long is the only mystery connected with it. Its application has been made to various useful purposes, as fire ins.; the ins. of life interests; of relief in time of sickness; ins. of growing crops; and ins. against lawsuits. It seems that the bus. is carried on upon the principle of mut. contribution, in a manner not dissimilar to that which prevailed amongst the old English gilds.

We have, in the writings of M. Skatchkoff (a Russian agriculturist, long resident in China), an account of the formation of asso. for the ins. of growing crops against fire, or destruction by civil commotion, or by cattle, which prevail generally in the rural districts. It is as follows. The landholders of each individual village, with the residents in its immediate neighbourhood, form a separate so., the affairs of which are conducted by the village Elders, without any interference on the part of the Gov. officials. A general meeting of the villagers, desiring that class of protection, is convened; but a day or two previous to the meeting, three or four Elders, or four or five of the most influential among the villagers, assemble in the josshouse, for the discussion of the necessary preliminaries: such as forming an approximate estimate of the extent of land under cultivation, and therefore of crops to be ins., and of the prob. rates of prem., causing proclamation to be made of their proceedings, and giving notice thereof to the police authorities. Affairs having been so far adjusted, on the day of meeting each landholder-leaseholders as well as freeholders being eligible-who desire to participate in the mut. ins. of the village crops, is expected to appear before the elders in the temple to affix his signature against his name in the list prepared as aforesaid. Those who do not appear are considered to be unwilling to share in the arrangement. The operations of the asso. when formed appear to be on the preventive principle, thus:

The number of watchmen to be hired is then determined in accordance with the extent of land [crops] ins. About Pekin two watchmen are allowed to every 300 English acres for the open country. In hilly districts, and where the view is much impeded by inclosures, the number is doubled. Each watchman receives about 12s. for the whole period of his service. The precise rates of prem. to be charged for each acre of land ins. are then fixed. This is in a great measure dependent upon the condition of the adjacent districts. When all is quiet, and no reason exists for anticipating any serious disorders, it is considered sufficient to have in hand, after the watchmen have been paid, a surplus equal to one-tenth of the sum collected in prems. On the other hand, when disturbances are rife, and the general aspect of affairs less assuring, the rates of prem. are raised, so as to leave in some cases, after paying the watchmen, a reserve equal to one-fifth of the total amount insured [? of prems.].

These arrangements are made for the duration of each crop separately—sometimes for still shorter periods. In many districts the winter crops are ins. from seed-time to harvest, which of course includes a provision against injury by cattle, and losses by robbery and fire. Around Pekin the ins. of winter crops is made from the middle of June, when the grain has attained its full growth, until harvest only. Spring crops are invariably ins. from the day of sowing to the day of harvest. The fields are watched day and night; for every thief taken in the act, and for every head of cattle caught trespassing, the watchmen receive a reward from the so. of 300 tsians, or about 8d. Each instance of neglect of duty is punished by a fine of double the amount. The punishment of the thief is severe; night thefts are punished less severely than those in broad daylight. Cattle found trespassing are impounded, to be redeemed by payment of a fine, varying with the description of cattle and other circumstances.

In the event of fire occurring in an ins. field, the Elders are bound to inquire into its causes. If it proves to have originated with the owner, he pays the so. a fine of Is. (500 tsians). If it were caused by another person, the delinquent pays a fine of ten times the value of the produce destroyed, the owner being indemnified by the so. For all losses the person ins. receives immediate payment of a sum equivalent to one and a half times his loss, estimated according to the prob. scale of prices during the ensuing winter. All money remaining over as a surplus out of the prems., fines, etc., is treated as a reserve fund, applicable to various public purposes, such as the repairs of the schools, temples, etc., and in providing gratuities for the police. The funds are invested by way of advance to village landowners, at the rate of 1 p. c. p. month. Any inadequacy in the funds is made up by an extra pro rata charge upon the acreage ins.

The practice of ins. against law proceedings is said to owe its origin to the well-known rapacity of Chinese officials, designated in the figurative language of the people, "The Tiger's Cruelty." Against these dangers nearly every village has its ins. asso. The following account of their formation and working is highly instructive:

When an asso. of this character is to be formed, the Elders prepare a list of the inhabitants, to which all who desire to join affix their signatures. Armed with this authority, the Elders then enter into secret negociations with the police inspector of the district as to the amount of composition to be paid to him for non-intervention in every case calling for the action of the police. Among these are cases of sudden death, suicides, compositions between debtors and creditors, family disputes, and the like. Availing themselves of their secret understanding with the authorities, the Elders take care to arrange all such matters privately, without affording any opportunity for police intervention. The rates of hush-money are generally small, varying from 1os. to 25s. of our currency.

These contracts are adhered to most scrupulously by both parties. All sums disbursed by the Elders in this way are repaid to them within a period of ten days by the other members, each contributing in proportion to the number of acres of land he holds. Membership is not compulsory; but the results are said sometimes to be unpleasant to those who decline to join, and these are generally in a small minority.- Ins. Reporter, Philadelphia.

We do not trace the practice of L. ins., in its simple aspect of making provision for families, amongst the Chinese. It may exist. The Brit. offices have not yet extended their operations beyond the range of the Brit. residents. The climate is somewhat excessive; that is, of greater range of temperature than is usual within the same parallels of latitude. Pekin, the capital, lies a degree south of Naples; and yet while the mean

temperature of the latter is 63°, that of the former is only 54°. In summer, however, the heat reaches 90' to 100°; while in winter the rivers are frozen for several months. The Chinese lead most temperate lives, and insanity and other mental diseases are almost unknown amongst them. CHINESE ARITHMETIC.-The Chinese have a most ingenious method of reckoning by the aid of the fingers, performing all the operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, with numbers from I up to 100,000. Every finger of the left hand represents nine figures, as follows:-The little finger represents units, the ring finger tens, the middle finger hundreds, the fore-finger thousands, the thumb tens of thousands. When the three joints of each finger are touched from the palm towards the tip they count one, two, and three of each of the denominations as above named. Four, five, and six are counted on the back of the finger joints in the same way; seven, eight, and nine are counted on the right side of the joints from the palm to the tip. The forefinger of the right hand is used as a pointer. Thus, 1234 would be indicated by first touching the joint of the forefinger next the hand on the inside; next the middle joint of the middle finger on the inside; next the end joint of the ring finger on the inside; and finally the joint of the little finger next the hand on the outside. The reader will be able to make further examples for himself. See also SHWAN-PAN.

CHINESE DIVISIONS OF LIFE.-To every decade of life the Chinese apply some special designation. The age of 10 is called "the Opening Degree;" 20, "Youth expired;" 30,"Strength and Marriage;" 40, "Officially apt;" 50, "Error knowing;" 60, "Cycle closing;" 70, "Rare Bird of Age;” So, “Rusty visaged ;” 90, “Delayed;" 100 "Age's Extremity.' Among the Chinese the amount of reverence grows with the number of years.-Bowring.

CHINESE SHWAN-PAN [or ABACUS].-An instrument for facilitating arithmetical calculations. See CALCULATING MACHINES.

CHISHOLM, DAVID, Act. of North British and Mercantile. He entered that office in 1841, and became its Act. in 1852. He had previously been under the able training of Mr. Edward Sang, and assisted that gentleman in the completion of his well-known actuarial T. Mr. Chisholm has contributed some valuable papers to the hist. of L. contingencies. In vol. ii. of Assu. Mag. [1852] there is a paper from his pen, On a New Method of Constructing a T. of the Prob. of Survivorship between Two Lives for every Combination of Ages, and also a T. of the present value of Survivorship Assurances of £1 on (x) against (y). This paper, we believe, was afterwards separately pub. Mr. Peter Gray offered some obs. upon it in a paper read before the Inst. of Act. in 1852, and printed in vol. v. of Assu. Mag., p. 107.

In vol. iii. of Assu. Mag. [1853] there is a letter on the Proper Expression for the amount of 1 with the Fractional Part of a Year's Interest, arising out of the consideration of a paper by Mr. E. J. Farren, "On the period intervening between the date of death and payment of sum assured."

In vol. iv. there is a letter, On the Values of Reversions payable at the Instant of Death. In 1858 Mr. Chisholm pub. Commutation Tables for Joint Annu., and Survivorship Assu. based on the Carlisle Mort. at 3, 34, 4, 5 and 6 p.c. Int.; with T. of Annu, and Assu. on Single Lives, and other useful Tables, and an Intro, on their Construction and Use. 2 vols., large octavo. It is impossible to speak too highly of the merits of this work. "They present the ne plus ultra of perspicuity and neatness," and have received the highest encomiums from actuaries on either side the Atlantic. Mr. James Meikle, in a letter to the Assu. Mag. [vol. vii. p. 297], says:

Besides introducing many new kinds of transactions, they greatly abbreviate the labour of the calculation of those transactions, with which we are already acquainted. In "Post obits," however, they afford a still greater advantage; they enable the actuary to ascertain more correctly the amount which should be charged the heir of entail in repayment of the sums or annu. advanced to him. Mr. Chisholm's T., however, enable the actuary to make the sum assu. increase yearly

in proportion to the outlay."

A writer (W. F. B.) in vol. viii. of Assu. Mag., p. 110, says: "Indeed, by Mr. Chisholm's arduous labours, the commutation system, originated by Mr. Barrett, improved by Mr. Davies, and extended and illustrated by Mr. [David] Jones, has been rendered complete in so far as relates to one or two lives.'

CHISHOLM, GEORGE, was Sec. of Essex and Suffolk Equitable, from 1850 to 1852. CHISHOLM, JAMES, Actuarial Assistant at the Imperial Life since 1869. He is a son of Mr. David Chisholm, of Edin., and was previously in the head office of North Brit. and M., which office he entered in 1861, working his way through several of the departments. In 1868 he read before the Inst. of Act. a paper: On the Arrangement of Commutation, or D. and N. Tables. The paper is printed in Assu. Mag., vol. xiv. p. 200. CHOKE-DAMP.-Carbonic acid; the irrespirable air of coal-pits, wells, and, in a modified degree, of the Metropolitan Railway. [FIRE-DAMP.]

CHOLERA, ASIATIC, OR EPIDEMIC [CHOLERA MORBUS].-It seems to be made clear by reference to the writings of Hippocrates-the father of medical science, who flourished about 400 years B. C.-and by the writings of Whang-shoo-ho, his contemporary in China, and also by the writings of Susruta, the greatest Hindoo medical authority, that the disease now designated Asiatic Cholera was known in the earliest times in Greece, China,

and India. Subsequent writers keep up the slender chain of its history down to modern times, when in some sort it has usurped the features of the Plague-that dread scourge of the dark and middle ages. We propose to review the hist. of this disease briefly and chronologically.

Garcia del Huerto, a physician practising in Goa about 1560, describes a visitation which is supposed to have been the Cholera. It is believed that Arungzebe's army suffered from it at the siege of Bijepoor in 1657. It seems certain that it was prevalent in India in 1769. In 1774 we hear of it again in India. Sir Edward Hughes's squadron suffered from the malady when off Ceylon in 1782. It seems to have been nothing else than Cholera that ravaged the Mahratta army under Hurree Punt, on the Toongboodra river in 1786; indeed Hurree Punt records with his own hand, "The loss sustained by the army in consequence of the Cholera Morbus is very great. Medicines are liberally supplied; some do recover, but by far the greater part die."

But we may pause and look nearer home. Sydenham, our great father of medicine, in his Opera Obs. Med., pub. 1669, describes a species of Cholera, which he says lasted a month, and-"Cam anni partem, quæ æstatem fugientem atque autumnum complectitur unice ac eadem prorsus fide, qua veris primordia hirundines, aut insequentis tempestatis fevorem cuculus amare consuevit." This beautiful passage being done into English may be read as follows:-"Habitually loves that part of the year which embraces the fall of summer and the autumn; and with that same instinct with which swallows (love) the beginning of spring, or the cuckoo loves the warmth of the season succeeding to it.

He also describes, in a later work, the severer epidemic of 1676—" Insueto tempestatis calore evectus," -as having appeared while the season was abnormally hot.

In 1817 the first serious outbreak of C. incident to its endemic form occurred at Jessore, near Calcutta, in the delta of the Ganges, and destroyed 10,000 persons. It reached Bombay 10th August, 1818, and committed some ravages. The attention of the Indian authorities was thus drawn to the subject before the prob. of its ever reaching our shores had been contemplated. The Marquis of Wellesley effected improvements in Bengal in 1821 in view of the C.; and we shall see all through the present art. that Indian officials have devoted the most painstaking attention to this epidemic. The Brit. medical attendant at Jessore declared that the outbreak of 1817 was not the first appearance of C. there. It will be instructive to pause for a brief glance at the conditions of the district in which the disease on this occasion-the first on which its origin and progress were actually observed upon by well-qualified practitioners-occurred. For this purpose we must fall back upon the early reports, to be presently mentioned. Jessore, at the period in question, was a crowded, dirty, ill-ventilated town, surrounded by a thick jungle, and in the rains by an immense quantity of stagnant water.—Jameson. The epidemic had not one but various local sources in the level and alluvial, the marshy and jungly tract of country which forms the delta of the Ganges, and extends from thence to Burrampooter. For here we find it as early as June and the beginning of July, 1817, noticed as prevailing to a serious extent in Nuddea, a province which is stated to be notorious for the disease in its endemic form, and in Decca.-Orton. In Sylhet the influence of situation was perhaps more remarkable than in any other quarter. It appeared that the villages in which it raged most extensively were considered by the natives as comparatively unhealthy and obnoxious to fevers of the intermittent type; being exposed to the effluvia arising from marshes and extensive lakes, in which the Zila abounds, particularly towards the south-west division, where the greatest number of victims fall. The Sepoy lines, on the contrary, being placed from 60 to 100 feet above the general level of the country, had scarcely any cases, excepting such as occurred in persons on guard at the different outposts.-Jameson.

In Calcutta the disease was from first to last most prevalent in the lower parts of the town and suburbs, as the Bura Bazar, Simeleia, Dyahutta, and Suwah Bazar; and in the suburbs the villages of Khidderpore, Bhuwanipore, Manicktolla, Kurrya, Entally, Chitpore, and Sealdah. These dependencies are everywhere intersected by pools, broad ditches, and channels, which, being imperfectly drained, are in the rainy season always full of stagnant water and rank weeds. From this plentiful source of corruption foul air is constantly given forth; and as all ventilation is obstructed by large groves of trees and vegetation of every description, it is there concentrated until it becomes entirely unfit for the purposes of respiration. The miserable condition of the generality of the inhabitants of these villages is hardly to be imagined. Each hamlet is made up of many mud or straw huts, generally from 6 to 12 feet square, placed so close to each other as to leave scarcely room to pass between them. In every one of these wretched hovels a whole familysometimes consisting of 6 or 8 persons-resides; and not unfrequently cows, pigs, and other domestic animals add to the filth and foul atmosphere in which they abound. The higher class of natives and Europeans, generally inhabiting the better raised and more airy parts of the town, suffered proportionably less than the lower ranks.

Such was the condition of a large part of the dense pop. in the birthplace of the modern Asiatic C., as shown by official reports made at the time. The returns of the

mort. among the natives are very imperfect; but they show that while many thousands perished in Calcutta, and the districts on the Ganges, as far as Allahabad, the casualties