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actually fetid with the long pent up exhalations from the bodies
of their crowded inmates. But too often among the poor, the
want of ventilation depends in great measure on faulty construction
of the houses, occasionally the windows of one of their
apartments do not open, or they only open below, frequently
there is no means of ventilating the stair-case, and not uncommonly
houses are built back to back. Defects of this sort are
serious enough, and when complicated as they frequently are with
cesspools, which open directly into the houses, or communicate
with their interior through the medium of saturated walls,
they constitute evils of the most dangerous kind, and call for
immediate remedy. But house ventilation is not the only kind
of ventilation that is needed, the air of districts and of streets
requires constant renovation, and especially the air of districts,
which like these lie low, aud are constantly yielding unwholesome
exhalations. The construction of narrow streets, aud of
courts ending in blind extremities, is therefore to be deprecated,
and I am glad to say that as yet not much sin lies at the door
of this Parish on that score. In connection with this subject,
I may allude to a matter with regard to which there has been
some discussion lately in the Vestry, namely vegetation.—I beg
to assure you that I regard trees as a most important sanitary
provision. It is a fact well known to physiologists, that those
gases which the animal body exhales, and which are poisonous
to it, are the appropriate food of vegetables, and are greedily
absorbed by them ; and that, on the other hand, vegetables
having appropriated to their own nourishment that which is
inimical to us, yield up to the air again those constituents of
which we are in need; so that vegetables and animals play as it
were into each others hands, each abstracts from the atmosphere
that which is either hurtful or useless to the other, and each
restores to the atmosphere that which the other requires.
Among the evils which tend to increase the mortality of a
district, poverty must take a high rank. Hard work and insufficient
food rapidly break down the strongest constitutions;
over-crowded and ill ventilated rooms breed fevers; foul
water and defective drainage prepare the way for epidemic
cholera; the wretchedness of home finds a glaring and alluring
contrast in the gin palace; and the indecencies which promiscuously
crowded sleeping apartments give rise to, lay the
foundation of vices which an early death so often expiates. It