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CHAPTER IV.

OF THE CHOICE OF HEALTHY SITUATIONS.

In setting out the walls of a city the choice of a healthysituation is of the first importance : it should be on highground, neither subject to fogs nor rains; its aspectsshould be neither violently hot nor intensely cold, buttemperate in both respects. The neighbourhood of amarshy place must be avoided; for in such a site themorning air, uniting with the fogs that rise in the neigh-bourhood, will reach the city with the rising sun; andthese fogs and mists, charged with the exhalation of thefenny animals, will diffuse an unwholesome effluvia overthe bodies of the inhabitants, and render the place pesti-lent. A city on the sea side, exposed to the south orwest, will be insalubrious; for in summer mornings, acity thus placed would be hot, at noon it would bescorched. A city, also, with a western aspect, would evenat sunrise be warm, at noon hot, and in the evening ofa burning temperature. Hence the constitutions of theinhabitants of such places, from such continual and ex-cessive changes of the air, would be much vitiated. Thiseffect is likewise produced on inanimate bodies: nobodywould think of lighting his wine-cellar from the south or thewest, but from the north, an aspect not liable to theseviolent changes. In granaries whose aspects are southof the east or west, the stores are soon ruined; andprovisions, as well as fruits, cannot be long preservedunless kept in apartments whose aspects are north of theeast or west. For heat, which acts as an alterative, by