observed, that the deep ditches of the forts,
even though they contained no water—and
still more the deep ravines of rivers and water-
courses—abounded with malarious poison."
At the barracks of Spanish Town, in Jamaica,
three men were found to be attacked with
fever on the ground floor for every one that
was attacked upstairs. The ground floor was
not used as a barrack after this discovery had
been distinctly made.

In the next place it should be understood
that the poison of Malaria may be wafted by
wind into an adjacent healthy district. It
comes often accompanied by, perhaps clinging
to, mist. In tropical climates, when the
wind blows long from the same quarter, it is
especially important to keep this property of
the Malaria in mind. We can understand by
it how it happens that malarious poison,
though creeping habitually along the ground,
may be rolled by an ascending current up
a hill, or even over it, and down by the
descending current on the other side. In the
Island of Dominica a barrack was erected in
a nook between two hills, which proved to
be under just such a cataract of marsh poison
as might thus be made. The nook proved
to be pestiferous beyond belief. At a
distance of five hundred yards on the same line
of elevation a site was found perfectly healthy.
Lancisi, the first writer on Malaria, relates
another case in point. Thirty ladies and
gentlemen sailed to the mouth of the Tiber
on a party of pleasure. The breeze shifted to
the south, and began to blow over a marshy
tract of land to windward of them. Twenty-
nine of the thirty were immediately afterwards
attacked with tertian ague. Humboldt
says that the town of Cariaco has intermittent
fevers brought to it by the north-west wind,
which brings with it miasma from the Laguna
of Campona. Mindful of these facts, settlers
in hot climates should avoid founding towns or
houses on the lee side of suspicious ground.

It is a curious fact, that the poison of
Malaria, having its downward tendency,
appears to become lost and absorbed in
passing over water. Crews of ships and boats,
very near to a malarious shore, sleep in the open
air unhurt, though over land the poison may
be wafted to a distance of at least three miles.

The marsh poison adheres also to the foliage
of lofty trees. For this reason it is very
dangerous to go under large trees in a malarious
place, and of course doubly dangerous to sleep
under them. The trees, however, can by
reason of this property be used for the defence
of life. In Guiana the settlers live unhurt
close to the most deadly marshes, where a
thick screen of the large trees that abound in
that territory happens to be interposed. New
Amsterdam, in Berbice, lies on the lee side of
a huge, swampy forest, in the direct track of a
strong trade wind, that blows over it night
and day, bringing the stench of the marshes
even into the bed-rooms of the town. But it
brings no fever. To sleep after nightfall in the
forest would be certain death to any European,
but the poison hangs among the trees, and
the stench only escapes into the town.

Lancisi knew this fact about the poison of
Malaria. He describes the vast increase of
agues and remittent fevers in Rome, during
the summer of 1695, after a certain
inundation, and points out that the bad effects of
the flood were felt throughout all Rome,
except only one quarter that was protected
by a belt of trees around it.

The last peculiarity to be noted concerning
Malaria—a peculiarity common again to many
evil things—is that her power decreases with
the growth of population, and of civilisation.
Land that has been well drained and ploughed
ceases to be fit soil for Malaria. East Lothian
in Scotland was once so productive of Malaria,
that reapers then expected ague quite as
surely as their wages; now, that region is well
tilled and planted with wood, and ague is
unknown there. Agues are much rarer in large
towns than in villages; perhaps the number
of fires burned upon thickly peopled ground
may make appreciable difference in the amount
and strength of the marsh poison. The
Italians date the introduction of the Malaria
into the Maremna from the great plague of the
sixteenth century, which made the inhabitants
too few to resist her tyranny. And, far away
from the Maremna, we are told by Bishop
Heber that the native Indians were ascribing
the increased power of Malaria in Rudespoor
to the depopulation of the district caused by
the invasion of Meer Khan.

PLAYTHINGS.

I AM a rich old bachelor with, many
godsons, and have been thinking about toys;
being in the habit of buying a good many on
holiday occasions. In the week before Christmas-
day, I was very busy among toy-shops,
and, among other places, visited a bazaar in
Langham Place, London, containing a great
number of Christmas-trees, and a large space
called a "German Fair," wholly devoted to
the sale of German toys. I own, that when I
had got through the chirp of birds among the
bushes at the entrance, and the regular bazaar,
and, following the printed directions, went
upstairs to "To the German Fair," and when
coming into the said fair, I found myself in a
spacious world of toys among a crowd of
children, capering like young kids about their
mothers, with an echo of light music through
the place, I felt disposed to kidnap, and to
carry home forcibly, two or three children
whom I would keep locked up in my dismal
chambers, and engage to play at marbles with
me all day long. I said to myself, Uncle
Starch, you are a miserable bachelor, you are
alone in the world, adrift in a boat on a salt
ocean of tears—fine thought that, by-the-bye!
And so I was, and so I drifted back to thoughts
of my own childhood, and took a hearty feed
upon the memory of my departed toys.