Large numbers were in a state of utter destitution in the city of Cork.  As happened in other cities and important towns, the country people flocked in to swell the misery; and roaming in groups through the streets, exhibiting their wretchedness, and imploring relief, they gave them a most sad and deplorable appearance.  Even the houses of once respectable tradesmen, denuded of every article of furniture, and without fuel or bedding, presented a most affecting spectacle of want and misery.  And so impressed were the committee of the Society of Friends in Cork with the sufferings of this class, that a separate subscription was raised for supplying them with straw beds and some fuel.  The apparatus which this committee had erected for the making of soup was, they thought at first, on too extensive a scale, but it was soon found to be insufficient to meet the calls which were daily made upon it.  Their Report of the 1st of February says:  “Our distribution of soup is rapidly increasing; during the past week it averaged one thousand and sixteen quarts a-day, and on seventh day it reached the extent of twelve hundred and sixty-eight quarts.”  It went on increasing until it had, a fortnight later, reached fourteen hundred quarts a-day.  Besides the distribution of soup by the Society of Friends, there were four district soup houses, supplying over six-thousand quarts of soup daily; so that, at this time, forty-eight thousand quarts of soup were made and distributed weekly in the city of Cork.  There was a nominal charge of a penny or so a quart for some of this soup, but much of it was given away gratuitously.  Speaking of the accounts from different parts of the county Cork, the Report says:—­“Where the potato crop was most completely annihilated—­in the far west—­the Famine first appeared, but other quarters were also invaded, as the remnant of the crop became blighted or consumed.  Hence, in localities, which until recently but slightly participated in this afflictive visitation, distress and destitution are now spreading, and the accounts from some of these are presenting the same features of appalling misery as those which originally burst upon an affrighted nation from the neighbourhood of Skibbereen.”  In the postscript of a letter to the Cork Examiner, Rev. James O’Driscoll, P.P., writing from Kilmichael, says:  “Since writing the above a young man named Manley, in fever at Cooldorahey, had to be visited.  He was found in a dying state, without one to tend him. His sister and brother lay dead quite close to him in the same room.  The sister was dead for five days, and the brother for three days.  He also died, being the last of a large family.  The three were interred by means of a sliding coffin.”