One of the hidden glories of Victorian engineering is proper drains. Isolating a city’s effluent and shipping it away in underground sewers has probably saved more lives than any medical procedure except vaccination.

We do not refer to the fashionable annuals, those very ineffable bulletins of lordly and ladyly inanity;

A prune is a shriveled plum.

The Yangtze River, known in Tibet as the Chinsha (Upper Yangtze), rises from these perpetual snows and begins its plunging, serpentine descent through awesome gorges before it spreads its wings and sweeps across the alluvial plains of Central China.