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poor by authorities who neglect to supply proper means of
disinfection. It is true the greatest difficulties are frequently
experienced in procuring sites for buildings to
contain the necessary apparatus, but the bad policy of
permitting a penal clause to exist in an Act of Parliament
without adequate provision being made to enable the poor
fully to obey the law, should be corrected with as little
delay as possible.
The Commons and Open Spaces of the District.-There
is one thing upon which those of the inhabitants who
reside near the Heaths and Commons of this extensive
area may be very fairly congratulated, and that is, the
passing of certain Acts of Parliament for vesting the
management of Wimbledon, Putney, and Wandsworth
Commons, in representative and responsible conservators,
the better to preserve them to the public as places of
healthful recreation. This is a boon that has long
been contended for, and the impossibility of any
individual or body of speculators now succeeding in attempts
to establish sewage-farms or such like nuisances on
these Commons, cannot prove otherwise than a source of
great satisfaction to the ratepayers.
Water Supply.—The Medical Officers of Health return
to this subject with very considerable misgivings, in respect
to any very speedy realisation of the hopes of the public
that water is to be henceforth supplied to the inhabitants
on the constant principle, and of a quality superior to that
hitherto afforded them by the Companies. The season
has arrived when the storage of potable water in exposed
cisterns and filth-collecting water-butts should claim the
particular attention of every householder; for assuredly
it will be some time yet before the public will obtain its
water without the intervention of these objectionable
receptacles, The apathy of the Water Companies in this
matter is only equalled by that of the public; but a
cholera or fever invasion of the country may possibly