is now quite. memory of the past, and the season of dryness has given Jace to a period of damp and rain.
fo longer does the Water Authority cast anxious eyes heavenwards when he rises after praying for rain, the previous nil and no longer does the citizen of Victoria limit his baths and look askance at his tumbler, The former can be replenished as much as he pleases; the appearance of the latter is no longer murky and unappetising. No, we have had rain; rain in torrents, rain in sheets, rain by the bucketful, and rain in driving sleet and impalpable mist; and still it rains, and the reservoirs are slowly filling, for the showers though frequent are not prolonged, and though it, has rained on fifteen days, I doubt whether it totals more than ten inches up to the present moment, But that is something in these later times of light rains and scanty rainfalls; it exeeedeth' the entire rainfall of the first five-months of the year, and some people,
seem inclined for just a little fine weather beginning to tire even of a good thing, and an occasional peep at old Sol.
Meantime the dirty pices (and they are numerous) of this closely packed city, and the drains, which are too frequently anything but sweet, have been washed freely and the plague should now find no abiding place here. Yet it lingers, and I fear will take its own course. There were 21 cases and 17 deaths yesterday. It does not grow worse, but it does not decline as rapidly as we had hoped.
THE SANITARY BOARD, At the meeting of this body, held on the Sth inst. there was, consequent on an applied ian_to be allowed to put up water-dossels in the Queen's Building, a lengthy discussion on the old and" well-worn theme of the relative merits of water carriage and the bucket system. The Director of Public Works waxed quite eloquent in favour of the former, which he claimed was the system of civilisation and should be adhered to in spite of circumstances and people; and, perhaps, if there were no Orientals in the place, and if there were no imperfect traps, and an absolute certainty of a never-failing water supply, I might be disposed to agree with him. But I have had some experience here, and I remember a time. when typhoid and diphtheria, and other cognate diseases were unknown, 'That was when there were no water-closets to speak of. 'Now these di eases are very rare stilljand I agree with Mr. May that these are mostly traceable to the milk supply, that the immunity from them is due to' the general use of the bucket system. I trust that the time will never come when this colony will give up that system, for not only will the harbour become pestilential but every house will be in peril of typhoid and diphtheria.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.