petition in England, and the removal of the duties in this country caused a great improvement in the demand, without the continuance of the necessary surveillance in regard to quality, and manifest depreciation has since taken place. It has always been the custom to color even genuine green teas more or less. The great demand which has of late years sprung up for green teas on American account, has given rise to the most extensive frauds in that article. A quantity of damaged black teas will be taken and dried in baskets over pans of charcoal. The dried leaves, in quantities of a few pounds each, are then placed in heated cast iron pans. A workman stirs the leaves rapidly with the hand, mixing in a small quantity of tumeric, which imparts an orange tinge to the leaves. A powder prepared from Prussian blue, (Prussiate of iron, a poison,) and gypsum, is then added to the leaves, which are stirred over the fire until they assume the fine bloom color of hyson, with much the same scent. The leaves are then sifted. The first sifting is called hyson skin, and the last young hyson. This fraud is perpetrated on a most extensive scale, and has doubtless given rise to the belief in the injurious nature of green tea. On the importation of the teas into this country, further deceptions are practised in re packing and re-marking the boxes, by which means inferior teas are made to appear as if in the original China packed boxes. Hyson skin, of good quality, very frequently resembles old hyson, but it is a cheaper tea by fifteen or twenty cents per pound. Fraudulent jobbers erase the printed faces from the hyson skin boxes and reface them "Fine Old Hyson," and in this way sell hyson skin for more than it is worth. The same fraud is practiced in black teas. Souchong is frequently refaced "Fine Oolong," which enables dishonest dealers to sell such tea for from twelve to twenty cents more than its value.

Tea in the United States was subjected to a heavy duty until 1833, when it being recognized as one of the necessaries of life, the tax was removed altogether. The consumption immediately rose per head, as seen in the above table, from one-half pound per head to nearly one pound per head, but is far behind the rate of consumption in England, where it has always paid a high duty. It remained free of duty until the present war, when twenty cents per pound duty was charged, and this charge, with the rise in exchange and the premium on the gold required to pay duties, have greatly enhanced the price to the consumer, while the portion formerly used at the South has been stopped by the embargo. Hence the consumption for the moment may be supposed to be very much reduced. The future of the trade is however to be judged of from its great increase in years past. If, therefore, at the close of century the population of this country numbers 100,000,000 of tea drinkers, they must find their sources of supply at home, or submit to continued and inconvenient drains of gold and silver to pay for it, since it is not at all likely that the demand for American goods will increase in China in a ratio ad equate to meet the necessary payments.

HEALTH.

NEW YORK versus LONDON.

A LITTLE more than three centuries ago a celebrated Hollander, ERASMUS, admonished the municipality of London that the Sweating Sickness which so pertinaciously clung to that city for more than half a century was due to the absence of all provision for cleansing the streets. This ERASMUS is said to have been learned in all knowledge, while he was also an acute original thinker. In a letter to Cardinal WOLSEY's physician, Dr. FRANCIS, he discourses on household arrangements, which, though at that time peculiar to the English metropolis, seems to have so much significance to us, even now, that we cannot forbear to quote it:

"I often wonder," he wrote, "and that not without concern, whence it comes to pass that England for so many years hath been continually afflicted with pestilence, and above all with the Sweating Sickness, which seems in a manner peculiar to that country. We read of a city which was delivered from a plague of long continuance by altering the buildings according to the advice of a certain philosopher.

"I am much mistaken if England, by the same method, might not find a cure. First of all they are totally regardless concerning the aspect of their doors and windows to the east, north, &c.; then they build their churches so that they admit not a thorough air, which yet, in GALEN's opinion is very necessary. They glaze a great part of the sides with small panes, designed to admit the light and exclude the wind; but these windows are full of chinks, through which enters a porcelated air, which, stagnating in the room, is more noxious than the wind. As to the floors they are usually made of clay, covered with rushes that grew in fens, which are so lightly moved now and then that the lower part remains sometimes for twenty years together, and in it a collection of spittle, vomit, urine of dogs and men, beer, scraps of fish, and other filthiness not to be named. Hence, upon change of weather a vapor is exhaled very pernicious, in my opinion, to the human body. Add to this that England is not only surrounded by the sea, but in many parts is fenny and intersected with streams of a brackish water; and that salt fish is the common and favorite food of the poor. I am persuaded that the island would be far more healthy if the use of these rushes were quite laid aside, and the chambers so built as to let in the air on two or three sides, with such glass windows as might either be thrown quite open, or kept quite shut, without small crevices to let in the wind. For as it is useful sometimes to admit a free air, so it is to exclude it. The common people laugh at a man who complains that he is affected by changeable and cloudy weather, but for my part, for these thirty years past, if I ever entered into a room which had been uninhabited for some months, immediately I grew feverish. It would also be of great benefit if the lower people could be persuaded to eat less of salt fish, and if public officers were appointed to see that the streets were kept free from mud and and that not only in the city but in the suburbs. You will smile perhaps, and think that my time lies upon my hands, since I employ it in such speculations; but I have a great affection for a county which received me

so hospitably for a considerable time, and I shall be glad to end the remainder of my days in it, if it be possible. Though I know you to be better skilled in these things than I pretend to be, yet I could not forbear from giving you my thoughts, that, if we are both of a mind, you may propose the project to men in authority, since even princes have not thought such regulations to be beneath their inspection."*

Three centuries have carried the world high up in the scale of civilization. During the interval what has science not accomplished for the wellbeing of man? What have the spread of intelligence, the labor of missionaries, the intercommunication of thought, the better understanding of nations and classes, not wrought for the happiness of the human race? To dwell upon human progress for the last three centuries, is to behold at a glance the spoils of as noble a victory as ever rewarded patient endurance, unflinching energy, and heroic devotion. All along during the progress, examples might be given of the advantages of treating health on principle. A corresponding change in health and duration of life of the total mass of society has equally occurred.

The city of New York has been for well nigh fifty years, in a condition scarcely above what London was three centuries ago. Like it too, have been the men in authority," and the "public officers" in their heedlessness of recommendations of men, who, like ERASMUS, venture to call attention to the circumstances which cause such frightful mortality. Had the advice of such men been heeded, New York to-day would doubtless number at least one-third more of population, in persons who have been carried off by diseases wholly avoidable under proper sanitary regulations. Besides this, there would be the additional prosperity and happiness of the community-which have been squandered together with human life, until our faithless "authorities" and "officials are either blind to its appreciation, or else they seek to blind others by cunningly devised statistics, in order to establish the security of their own positions.

To whatever extent the duration of human life is diminished by noxious agencies, so much productive power is lost, and every community is poor and powerless in the reverse ratio to the average duration of life. Every death under the age of fifteen years carries with it a positive loss, because previous to this age subsistence involves a cost-a direct outlay-whilst, if life is preserved, a productive member of society is added and remuneration rendered. And if the probabilities of life are so low as to make the average adult age young, the proportion of widowhood and orphanage is correspondingly increased, and the productive members of society proportionately burdened. In short, premature deaths cut right into the center of commercial prosperity. Had FULTON died in his infancy, or MORSE before his great invention, the world might have long remained ignorant of the loss sustained by a premature death. Besides, a large infantile mortality presuppose sickly, feeble lives to the survivors-incapable of vigorous exertion, and frequently interrupted by periods of illness and debility. The man, in such a community, whose life has not exceeded forty years, has had many periods of inability and sickness before its close; and as a rule, short lived persons have more years of inability and uselessness than the long lived, for among healthy men, it is common to observe individuals accomplish great labors in comparatively old age.

* MALCOM'S" London," pp. 459-60.

The preservation of human life is the strongest test by which to measure the efficiency of all institutions devoted to the accomplishment of temporal aid to mankind; and the duration of life is the most expressive testimony to the success with which they accomplish their objects. Burdens are created, and costs entailed upon the industrious survivors of every community, in direct ratio with a high mortality, and the pecuniary costs of pernicious influences may always be measured by the charges attendant on the duration of life and the reduction of the period of working ability; the cost will include, also, much of the attendant vice and crime, as well as the destitution which comes within the province of pauper support. The aggregate happiness and general prosperity of everything that makes life dear is in proportion to the duration of human life; and if on examination, we find that in London the average duration of human life is one-fifth greater than it is in New York, we may safely conclude that the people of London have at least a fifth more of all the elements of happiness and weilbeing which it is the object of humane institutions to produce.

The earliest reliable data of the mortality of Great Britain, was for select lives only, under the "Million Act" of 1695. The mortality which is recorded to have taken place among the nominees under this act-among healthy persons selected from the middle ranks of society--was about one in thirty-seven. In 1780 the annual mortality of England and Wales was one in forty. In 1790 it diminished to one in forty-five. In 1801, to one in forty-seven; the moderate improvement during this decade, is doubtless attributable to the great scarcity with which England was afflicted in 1795 and 1800; it was more than made up, however, by the succeeding ten years of plenty, for in 1811 the mortality had diminished to one in fifty, and in 1821 to one in fifty-eight. Giving an increase of viability in England and Wales from 1780 to 1821, of nearly one-third in forty years.

The decline of mortality in London was more marked. In the year 1697 there were in that city 21,000 deaths; whereas, a century later, in 1797, there were only 17,000 deaths, notwithstanding there was a large increase of population. Yet from 1720 to 1750 the death rate of London increased. At the latter period, 1750, the annual mortality of London was about one in twenty! Greater even than it was half a century before. This terrible mortality has been, probably with justice, attributed to intemperance; and this vice was at that time deemed one of the chief arguments for the imposition of high duties on alcoholic liquors. Whether it was really true that intemperance, which was at that time general in England, was or was not the cause of the then great mortality, it is at any rate quite certain that from the time of the imposition of high duties on alcoholic liquors, may be dated the gradual and constant decline of the annual mortality of London.

From 1750 to 1800 the mortality decreased from one in twenty to one in thirty. In 1811 it was one in thirty-eight; and in 1821, about one in forty--a ratio which continued with slight variation until the next great impetus the carrying out of the new poor law, which began in 1838. Under this law, medical men of known competency were authorized to collect evidence on certain social conditions believed to be favorable to pauperism; and the evidence when logically collated, presented an amount of proof perfectly irresistable. And then it was, for the first time, that the doctrine of ERASMUS was received and elaborated, that disease was not inevitable; that its physical causes were removable. The year following, further

inquiry was instituted by the appointment of commissioners by the government, to ascertain the comparative health of trades; of the inmates of dwellings, factories, tenements, and lodging houses; the bearings of rents, wages, and expenditures on health and longevity; ard the means of cleanliness and decency. Whether the comforts of home tended to withdraw the laborer from the beer shop and the habits of improvidence to which it leads? Whether residents in separate and improved tenements are superior in condition as compared with persons who hold merely lodgings, or who reside with other families in the same house? Whether there was a proper supply of water for the purposes of cleanliness, and whether the surrounding lands were properly drained? Whether there was efficient ventilation, and due regard to warmth? Whether there were proper receptacles for garbage, &c., in connection with the houses? Whether tenement houses were overcrowded, and several families or persons occupying the space which would only properly suffice for a smaller number? Whether there were inferior lodging houses, underground or otherwise, crowded by mendicants and vagrants? Whether there was a gross want of cleanliness in the persons or habitations of certain classes? Whether there was a habit of keeping swine, &c., in dwelling houses, or close to the windows and doors? Such were a few only of the queries addressed to the physicians and others who assisted in the preliminary_investigations which began the great modern sanitary reform measures of England.

In 1842 appeared the first "Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Laboring Population of Great Britain ;" and following this quickly succeeded other "Reports," elaborating the investigations and facts that had preceded, till grim Death's harvest fields, in all their hideousness, were laid bare to public view; and then opened the sanitary campaign.

But not so, New York. CHADWICK's annual reports, and other colaborers in the work of sanitary reform, have fallen upon New York as did the letter of ERASMUS on London three centuries ago. Four years ago, a select committee from the State Senate were appointed to investigate the Health Department of the city of New York, and the published report of that committee, made an exhibit no less convincing than that which was made by the pioneers of sanitary reform in London twenty years earlier, while it showed a mortality nearly as appalling as that of London in 1750; and like it too, it had been increasing for the last preceding fifty years. In 1810 the ratio of mortality to the population in the city of New York was one in forty-six, and from that time it gradually increased, until in 1854 it was one in twenty-two! Since 1854, it has varied from one in twenty-seven to about one in thirty-nine for the year 1862. The latest report of our much respected City Inspector, would appear to establish, for the last three years. at least, a better condition of things than that above indicated. "The es timated population of London," he states, " according to the last report of the Registrar General, is about 2,774,338.

"The estimated population of this city is over 1,000,000, but we put it down at that number which is accredited to it by the Census Bureau at Washington. (?)

DEATHS IN LONDON TO EACH MILLION OF POPULATION.