It is asserted that the death-rate is higher by 4
per thousand (-4 per cent.) in districts where the water is " soft," than it is in districts where it is hard (i.e., usually water impregnated with lime). Glasgow and Manchester are supplied with soft water and have high death-rates. Birmingham, Bristol, Newcastle, and Warwick have hard waters and low death-rates. The French sevens found more conscripts rejected as physically below the requisite mark in soft-water districts than in the hard, and they inferred that the lime of hard water was needed for the tissues ; but surely the inference was not very scientific. Even granting the data, calcareous water must imply special qualities of soil, and others,—perhaps of climate ; and who is to know that it is not some one of the many concomitants of hard water, and not hard water itself, which is beneficial to health? No class of men seem to us to draw rasher and hastier inferences than the men of science.
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