recorded through most of the week as 98° Fahr., but
its range on the street level and in crowded rooms was at least ten degrees higher. The number of deaths reported in Greater New York on Thursday was two hundred and twenty-five, and it is believed that the total mortality in the Northern cities has exceeded a thousand. The number of " prostrations" was of course far greater, the ambulance carts which carry the faint- ing to hospital being completely overtaxed, and the hospitals themselves unable to receive more patients. The nights were worse than the days, the walls radiating heat till sleep became impossible, and thousands of people camped in the parks and on the sea beach. Business was completely sus- pended, clerks and salesmen being unable to do their work. while horses died in such numbers as to interfere seriously with the transit of goods. The cause of the special effects of heat in New York, Philadelphia, and other American cities of the East Coast seems not to be accurately known, but those effects are much greater than any experienced in the hottest cities of Asia. As animals suffer equally with men, they are not due to diet, or to the peculiar nervousness of Americans, but must arise from that peculiarity in the atmosphere which produces in better weather such a sense of exhilaration.
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