The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, The Morning News, and The Echo. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1882.

Auckland Star, Volume XVI, Issue 3851, 20 December 1882, Page 2

The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, The Morning News, and The Echo.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1882.

For the cams that lacks aaslstanct, if or the wrong that needs resisMnct For tha (uturaia tho distance, And Iho good that wo can do.

Thk year's work by the City Council, which is reviewed in tlio reports Jaid beforo the annual meeting to-day, aitords very satisfactory evidence of progress. Contracts covering permanent iinprovemepts to the value of £15,832 have been entered into ; the comumera of water have increased by 652; and the population of the city has growD, by annexations, to over 30,000. The various municipal departments are ministering on a larger scale to the public necessities. The Public Library ia attended by a growing number of visitors, who have behaved themselves with exemplary orderliness aud honesty, and 3G3 new books, many of them works of a practical kind, have been added to tho catalogue, and have received marked attention at tho hands of students. The average attendance is 300 on week days and 250 on bundays. The public abattoirs are, after much opposition, justifyiug the policy of their erection by supplying the wants of tbe trade—thirty-one butchers now use them, and 31,199 animals were slaughteied there duriog tho year. There is, however, a reverae side to the agreeable picture. Jt ia ; not at all re-assuring that a thousand cases of infectious disease were reported last . year- out of so small a population as lived within Ihe borough area prior to the amalgamation with tbe suburb?. I\ othinsj O'a vioxo omphatic tban tbe teaching of modern medical science regarding tbe preventibilily of these diseases, aud whether they aie due locally to bail drainage producing conditions favourable to their propagation or are spread through

a careless disregard of necessary precautions ia publij schools or private houses, the matter is one soiious enough to oxerc:sa the talents of tho Board ot Health aad I its medical officer. Fortunately, tho epidemics do not seem to have been of rt very malignant kind, the deaths from this) causes amounting to only 51, 25 being from scarlet fever and 21 from measles. But if the number of cases was so large when the disoftse appeared in a mild form, what niuy we expect from tho present sanitary arrangements should a malignant epidemics ever break out in tho city ? The Auckland management in tbe last epidemic of scarlet fever nnii measles was much inferior to that displayed by the authorities at the Thames, whore outbicaks weto repeatedly suppressed by strict isolation. Another statement in tbe reports which evidences retrogression rather than progress, m tho extraordinary decrease in the substitution of a«phalt for scoiia ash on the side-walks. Last year 13,447 square yarda of asphalt wcro laid j this year, oiily 7.565 yards. While extensive lines ot main thoroughfare liko We'llcsloy-sticet West, Franklin Koad, and others that might oe mentioned arc still receiving tho annual coating of scoria-ash, which is washed oil by the first downpour of rain, tho reduction in tho atplia't contract is to be deprecated. On the whole, however, the burgesses have not much to complain of iv the management of their lepiesontatives, and t'.io reports are creelitable to tbu Council and its officers.