iv

PREFACE.

the Statistics of the Prisoners of the Presidency have been brought together for
a series of years, and reviewed on an adequate basis.

   The chapters on the forms which destructive disease assumes in jails, and
on epidemic fevers, contagious and non-contagious, open up for study subjects
of world-wide importance.

   The Fourth Section continues the history of Epidemic Cholera in Hindostan
from 1873 to the close of 1876, taking up the narrative from the date at which
my report of 1872 closed. It teaches how, when cholera has disappeared, its
renewal over the different provinces of India may be expected to occur; and in
the successive advances throughout 1875 and 1876, phenomena so striking in
their character as to be appreciable by any educated observer, have come forward
in every month, and from one end of India to the other, to demonstrate that the
distribution of cholera is brought about by the same natural agencies which
have been in operation through the past sixty years.

   Simla, 1st January 1878.