the Exhibition, turning upon the proper application of
the terms "wall" and "counter" space, and upon
the construction and dimension of counters, and it was
agreed that a letter should be addressed by the honorary
secretaries to the executive committee, requesting a more
exact definition of the phrases, to be given with official
authority, to rectify errors, and prevent any future
misapprehension of their technical meaning. The appeals
were then one by one considered, and some of them
immediately adjudicated upon, whilst a greater number
were referred to the re-consideration of the respective
sectional committees, to be reported upon at the next
meeting of the council on the 28th instant.

An important step towards a system of Local Education,
has been taken at Manchester. A large and
influential meeting was held on the 6th, to consider a scheme
proposed by the Rev. Mr. Richson, for promoting
education in Manchester and Salford by means of local
rates. Mr. Richson bases his plan upon the fact that
there is a vast amount of unoccupied school-room within
these towns, which might be turned to useful account.
Its leading points are stated to be these: The right of
free education to be secured to every inhabitant of the
two boroughs; the cost to be levied by local rates, which
are never to exceed fivepence in the pound per annum;
and the management is to be given to committees elected
by the Municipal Councils out of their own members.
A guarantee is given that the religious convictions of
"all parties are to be respected and equally protected"
by the arrangements that, in all existing schools admitted
into union, "no creed or formulary shall be taught to
the children to which their parents or lawful guardians
may in writing object;" and in all new schools, "no
distinctive creed whatever is to be taught within the
ordinary school-hours, although the daily reading of the
Scriptures is to be provided for:" "the management of
the latter class of schools is to be in the hands of
exclusively lay persons." But the official features of the
plan are the fundamental principles, "that the assistance
of her Majesty's Inspectors is to be obtained in estimating
the educational wants of any locality; and that no school
is to be erected by the District Committees, and no land
to be purchased for such purpose, without the sanction
of the Committee of Privy Council on Education."
The meeting adopted a resolution in favour of the plan,
and appointed a general committee and a sub-committee
to carry it into effect. The committee includes the
names of the Bishop of Manchester, Mr. Heywood,
M.P., Mr. Kershaw, M. P., the Dean of Manchester, the
Rev. Hugh Stowell, and several other clergymen, both
churchmen and dissenters.

A public meeting was held at Manchester on the 8th,
for the Establishment of a Free Library and Museum
in that Town. The chair was occupied by the Mayor,
with whom the plan originated, and who has for some
time exerted himself to obtain its accomplishment. He
was supported by the Bishop and the Dean of Manchester,
and there was a large assemblage of the most
influential inhabitants. Resolutions for immediately carrying
the scheme into effect were unanimously passed.

The committee of the Association for Promoting the
Relief of Destitution in the Metropolis, and for
improving the condition of the poor by means of parochial
and district visiting, under the superintendence of the
Bishop of London and the clergy, have made a report
of the progress of the various provident sooieties in
connexion with the association. During the past year, the
deposits of the poor so aided were, 36 societies, 28,552
depositors, and the amount £13,366. In 1845, there
were only 12 societies, 3744 depositors, and the amount
£1451.

The Annual Report of Mr. Simon, the medical officer
of the City of London, to the Commissioners of Sewers,
published recently, is an interesting and valuable document.
The following are some of its leading facts and
suggestions. The rate of mortality for the City population
of 125,000 has been just below 22 deaths (21.92) out of
every 1000 living persons, in the year ending Sept. 28; in
the preceding year it had been 30 in 1000. Some large
share of the reduction has been due to circumstances
beyond human control; but a sensible diminution of the
causes of disease has been effected by the Commission,
and a considerable portion of the improvement may be
ascribed to sanitary works effected under its auspices.
Over the country under the survey of the Registrar-
General, the extreme rates of mortality are 14 per 1000
the lowest, and 33.5 per 1000 as the highest; the low
average belonging to a district in Northumberland, the
high one to Liverpool. For the whole south-east
division of England the rate is 19 per 1000. Mr. Simon
asserts that "few competent persons will doubt that
the mortality of London might speedily be reduced to
the level of any district mortality yet recorded by the
Registrar-General;" and he concludes his reasons for
this belief by the statement, that during the last year
"there was one sub-district of the City of London Union
—one comprising from 12,000 to 13,000 inhabitants—in
which, after including a due proportion of deaths which
had occurred in the union workhouse at Mile End, the
mortality stood at only 15 in the thousand; one in
which, if those extramural deaths had been excluded,
the local death-rate for the year would have been only
13.32." A detailed consideration of the sickness and
mortality of his reports discloses some points of interest
in respect to the ages at which death occurs, the
particular causes of death, and the very important local
differences of death-rate. The City of London appears to
be peculiarly fatal to infant life. Of the whole 3799
deaths last year, 1318 occurred under the age of five
years; of the whole 2752 deaths this year, 1032 occurred
under the age of five years. In the City of London
Union, the deaths of infants under five years old was
1-2.66 of the whole deaths, though their class numbers
only 1-11.09 of the whole population; so that they died
at more than four times (4.17) the rate which should
have befallen them as participators in the average
mortality of their district. This rate is not caused by
inappropriate diet, for it is highest during the first year of
birth, while the child depends for nourishment on its
mother. Inasmuch as the few days of these children arc
passed chiefly within doors, their high mortality gives
the least fallacious index of the unwholesomeness of the
dwellings in which they die, and affords the correctest
material to judge the sanitary condition of a district.
Upwards of 1200 of the deaths in the past two years
have been due to cholera and epidemic causes which
were unavoidable; a large number beyond were referable
to local and removable causes. It is notable that "the
proportionate mortality from scarlatina, measles, and
hooping-cough, is greatest where the general death-rate
is greatest." Among infants, too, under similar
circumstances, other diseases not commonly accounted specific,
assume a frequency and mortality warranting the belief
that they are of endemic and avoidable origin. The
hydrocephalus, convulsions, diarrhoea, bronchitis, and
pneumonia, often referred to the irritation of teething,
"prevail in district localities, with so marked a proportion
to the causes of other endemic disease, that we may
be sure of their partial and considerable dependence on
those local causes." The local differences of death-rate
are strikingly exemplified by comparison of the healthiest
with the unhealthiest wards of the city. In Cordwainers'
"Ward not a single death, and in Cornhill Ward only
two deaths, occurred from epidemic, endemic, or infectious
diseases; in the ward of Cripplegate Without there
were 299, of Bishopsgate Without, 329, of Farringdon
Without, 815. The local predilections of cholera are
marked and obstinate; they are not identical with those
of fever. Many of the worst fever-nests were unaffected
by it, while it visited spacious and airy houses along the
main thoroughfare of the City, and inhabited by opulent
tradesmen, members of the professions, and officers of
assurance companies,—as along the lines of Fleet Street,
Ludgate Hill, Farringdon Street, and New Bridge
Street. The conditions of its local preference seem to
be these:—"A peculiar condition of soil, of which dampness
is one sure and invariable character, and organic
decomposition (promoted by dampness) probably
another. Its local affinities have much analogy to those of
ague, and often appear identical in their range with
the sphere of malarious infection." These conditions
are exactly supplied by Farringdon and New Bridge
Street—the line of the Old-bourne (whence Holborn)
or river Fleet, now converted into a great sewer, and by
the districts on the other side of London Wall from
Bishopsgate to Aldersgate—a district described by Stow