description, yet the health of the people good. The population is more than 700 per square mile in the Delta. But the climate is a dry one; not moist like that of Bengal.
In this part of India the thermometer never falls so low in the cold months as it does farther north; and there appears to be some relation between the range of temperature at that time of the year and the prevalence of fever.
The Hooghly drainage investigation was taken up by the able Col. Haig, then chief engineer of the Irrigation Department, under the orders of the Lieut.-Governor, Sir G. Campbell, though there are no irrigation works there, in hopes of contributing towards the clearing up of the fever question, which has of late years assumed such enormous importance, or rather its enormous importance has only now come to be known. The fever seems partly owing to entire want of drainage, partly to foul drinking-water in the dry season.
Much more information than what Col. Haig managed, with all his super-eminent ability and energy, to collect in the course of a six months' enquiry, is said to be needed; and there is at least one point, the relative levels of sub-soil water, about which we as yet know far too little.
Col. Haig's 'Note' embodies certain facts in regard to the rainfall, surface levels, and drainage discharges of the district; but, as he states, he has no pretension to having exhausted the subject.
It is not, however, more enquiry that is most
