The accounts of the ravages of the Bengal fever in
the counties of Hooghly and Burti wan are dreadful. Those counties grow rice, and are full of sluggish streams, deep foul tanks, and water- covered rice-fields reeking with malaria. It is stated that a quarter of the people have perished since 1865, and astounding as such a mortality would be, — the population exceeding 3,000,000—it is not incredible. In one village a fifth of the population is dead, and the report for a single day, 27th of August, is " 100 attacked, 40 dead, 60 lingering." Bad drainage is said to be the cause; but the drainage cannot have been altered much in ten years, and we should like to know some- thing more about diet. Is there any real decrease in the quantity of food, and more particularly of milk and butter, that the people get? Looking at the catastrophe from this distance, it suggests to us a failure of stock, rather than any change in the surface of the country.
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