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quarter were Wednesday, December 23rd, Thursday, December 31st, and
Friday, January 1st, when the thermometer indicated respectively 18.9°,
18.5°, and 18.2°. The coldest day during the corresponding quarter of last
year was on Monday, the 29th December, when the thermometer indicated
22.1°, or 9.9° below the freezing point.
The rain-fall during the year was 18.31 inches, and in the previous
year, comprising 53 weeks, the rain-fall was 22.61 inches.

The Registrar-General, in his Report of births and deaths for the week
ending December 26th, 1874, in speaking of the deaths in London, from the
cold weather, says, "Men, as well as other animals with warm blood, have the
power of producing heat so as to maintain their temperature very constant;
but this power varies under different circumstances. And the demands on
it vary still more; for the loss of heat by the surface of the body, and
especially by the lungs, which lose heat by evaporation, and by contact with
the cold air inspired at an inconceivably more rapid rate in cold weather
than in warm. The heat has to be supplied by the food consumed, and the
conversion into heat is accelerated by exercise. If food is the fuel, exercise
is the blast that makes it burn.
"It was well established, by the researches of Villermé and Edwards,
that young children die in considerable proportions by exposure to cold, and
it was known in a general way that the winter is more fatal to old people
than to young.
"The weekly Tables carry us much further, and show that the mortality
after 20 increases with age rapidly, and that after a determined law.
Thus, if we divide life into vicennial stages, then beginning at 20, 40, 60,
80, the result in London in the six weeks of very cold weather ending 24th
February 1855 was found to be that the mortality due to cold at the four