studied by a special commission.  This commission, after a conscientious examination extending over three years of all the malarious localities in the province of Rome, has just published its report,[1] the conclusions of which are entirely in accord with the facts of universal experience.  They were not able to verify a single fact in support of Lancisi’s theory, while they found many of the same nature as that of Cistema, and which have resulted in overturning the theory entirely.

[Footnote 1:  Della influenza dei boshi sulla malaria dominante nella regiona marittima della provincia di Roma.  Annali di Agricoltura, No. 77, 1884.  Roma:  Eredi Botta.]

It has also been thought possible to practice drainage from above by means of plantations of certain trees which would draw considerable moisture from the earth, a method which might really be serviceable in some malarious districts.  But in accordance with the idea that malaria is a product of paludal decomposition, the trees selected have almost always been the eucalyptus.  It has been maintained that trees of so rapid a growth ought to drain the soil very actively, and also that the aroma of their foliage ought to destroy the miasmatic emanations.  I have hitherto been unable to verify a single instance of the destruction of malaria by eucalyptus plantations, but I do not consider myself justified in denying the facts which have been stated by others.  There is nothing to oppose the admission that these plantations, when properly made, may sometimes have been of great utility.  I maintain frankly, however, that they have not always been so, and that it is necessary to guard against the exaggerations into which some have allowed themselves to fall in recent times.  Such exaggerations might have been avoided if, instead of talking about these plantations on the basis of a theoretical assumption, the results only had been studied in places where the eucalyptus abounds.  It would then have been known that even in the southern hemisphere, the original home of the eucalyptus, there are eucalyptus forests which are very malarious.  This fact has been demonstrated by Mr. Liversige, professor in the University of Sydney, Australia.  Among us also, although everybody was convinced by the statements of the press that the locality of the Tre Fontaine, near Rome, had been freed from malaria by means of the eucalyptus, people were disagreeably surprised by an outbreak of very grave fever occurring throughout the whole of this colony in 1882, a year in which all the rest of the Roman Campagna enjoyed an exceptional salubrity.  If, alongside of these hygienic uncertainties, we place the agricultural uncertainties, we must conclude that it is necessary to contend strongly against this fanatical prejudice in favor of the eucalyptus tree.  These plants are, in fact, very capricious in their growth.  In full vegetation during the winter in our climate, they are often killed instantly by a sharp winter