29th January. TuerE is no old resident of Shanghai but will be ready to acknowledge, what is an undoubted fact, that of recent years the hygienic condition of the Settlement area has in several ways tended to improve in a marked degree. The outlying districts have been better looked after, better drained, better scavenged, and are in every way, insalubrious as many of them still are, in a healthier condition than was once the case. People newly arrived must not forget that with the ever-increasing perimeter of what we may call the town-built parts of our Settlements there is an everlengthemug environment of borderland between the artificial sanitation of the town and the no-sanitation of the country, a long belt of circumscribing horrors with which it is difficult to cope, partly from its extent, partly from lack of powers.
It is not, however, of these that we desire particularly to speak just now. We believe that everything is being done in these places that is_possible under the circumstances. It is to matters closer home that we desire to draw attention, or rather, since attention has already been sufficiently drawn to them, to insist upon improvement so far as they are concerned, We have at last got our milk supply under pretty careful control. It is quite true that we have to pay for it in more ways than one, But that is only tobe expected. So with our laundries, so with various other matters of daily life. Duubtless in time we shall see the advantages thus conferred upon us reflected in the Health Officer's reports year by year.
But there is one important branch of our local hygiene that is sadly out of gear, and that, one of the most important. We refer to the collec tion and removal of refuse. Years ago night soil was collected by a native contractor who was more or less a law unto himself. We will not recall the morning hor-tors of that pestiferous period. The Council then took the matter entirely into its own hands, and an improvement was soon noticeable, an improvement which with some Iapses has continued up to the present time. We should not like to say that the collection is perfect in system even now, but it is a vast improvement upon what went before.
We wish we could say as much for the manner in which the general refuse, the daily accumulation of the legion of dust-bins, is got rid of ere some small efforts have on one or two occasions been made to introduce improvement. Butin everything material the method to-day is the method of the worst periods
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.