through death, flight, or a political revolu- | quite impossible to make ordinary French

tion.

men understand to what abuses this pracOn the accession of Louis Philippe, when tice may lead. If appealed to on the subthe nation, in the first flush of its joy at ject they, answer that many a boy and girl having dethroned Charles X., was clamour- have been saved from ruin by a few months ing for reforms of every possible and im- of timely confinement, and there can be no possible kind, one of the first subjects forced doubt that there is a certain amount of truth on the attention of Government was that of in this. But, looking at the matter from a new lunacy law. Publishers' shelves were another point of view, it is evident that the teeming with pamphlets and memoirs by facility for locking up a refractory son must people who had been locked up as madmen often extend to the locking up of other relduring the late reign, and the King showed atives, and that husbands and wives, for as much anxiety as any of his subjects to instance, may not unfrequently persuade render arbitrary incarcerations thenceforth the family doctor that their consorts are impossible. What with parliamentary com-labouring under brain excitement, and missions, however, and the interminable have need of rest." In the matter of the course of speech-making that has to be gone existing lunacy laws, as in a good many through before an injustice can be remedied other cases, the French have been deluded in a constitutional country, nothing was into accepting a flash and high-coloured but done until eight years later, when a measure, empty measure, in the belief that it was at that time considered radical and perfect, good and genuine. The terms penal serviwas introduced into the Chamber of Depu- tude, imprisonment for life, penalty of death, ties and passed through the two Houses. &c., sound very well as threatened against By the terms of the new law nobody could persons who shut up sane folk; but what be shut up without a certificate from two do they mean? The scope of every good doctors, one of whom was to be the doctor lunacy law should be preventive, not reof the asylum where the alleged lunatic was pressive. It is all very well to cut off the to be confined. Every asylum, public and head of a mad-doctor if an individual whom private, was moreover subjected to quarter- he has illegally confined and maltreated can ly visits from a Procureur du Roi, and a prove these facts (which, by the way, he terrific scale of penalties was proclaimed never can); but the proper course would against those who locked up sane people, be to render it impossible that any individor who in any way rendered themselves ac-ual should be so shut up and maltreated. cessory to such an act by ill-treating or It is true that the madhouses are inspected simply refusing to liberate a man proved to now, which sixty years ago they were not, be of sound mind. Now this law may and that a person illegally confined has have been effective enough during the reign therefore a privilege which was denied to of Louis Philippe, which was a time of free- many of his predecessors in bondage- that dom; and it might be effective again should of having a State official come every three the somewhat problematical Empire Li- months to look at him. But is this much of a béral" be ever established; but it has cer- consolation? The inspectors who visit madtainly not been effective during the nineteen houses see several thousands of lunatics years that have elapsed since 1851. The every month, and from nine-tenths of these best proof that can be adduced of this is the unfortunate persons they hear the same enormous use made of maisons de santé, or story. If a sane man appeals to them for madhouses, by French fathers who want to release they have very few means of disbring unruly children to obedience. Noth- tinguishing him from others, the more so as ing is more common in France than for a a reasonable man unjustly confined is usualfather, who has a scapegrace son, or a daugh-ly much more excited than a genuine lunater inclined to marry a young gentleman of slender means, to ask the family doctor to sign a certificate to the effect that the offending young person is suffering "from excitement of the brain, and needs rest." This is quite enough to open the doors of a maison de santé, and the son or daughter, as the case may be, is confined until a disposition to be dutiful has been developed. It is

The penalty of death was imposed in cases where the owner of a madhouse, knowing a man to be sane, received him, kept him more than three months, and subjected him to acts of cruelty.

tic. It is to be hoped that these facts will end by forcing themselves upon the attention of M. Emile Ollivier when he has done with the plebiscitum, the splits in the Cabinet, the trial of the February conspirators, and other small matters, which are making his life uncomfortable. If he succeeds in giving his countrymen a humane set of lunacy laws, he will have done more for the real principle of liberty than any of his forerunners have done. For, though a free press and free right of meeting are excellent things, there is a thing better still, which

is to be free from dread at the sight of one's" there was unusual difficulty in disabusing family doctor, and to have no reason for ap- the natives of the idea that the inquiry had prehending lest that useful friend should be been set on foot by Government, and thereinduced to declare on paper that one has fore must mean mischief." In England need of a little rest." there was less of suspicious or superstitious opposition, but more of downright "stupidity." Under these impediments, and, moreover, what Dr. Beddoes justly calls the "intrinsic difficulties" of the inquiry, the work was, no doubt, very imperfectly done. Many inductions seemed formed on a meagre amount of cases. The whole must be taken as a "tentamen," rather than an experiment carefully worked out. But, with this preliminary caution, we may safely use, as far as it will go, the knowledge thus acquired.

From The Pall Mall Gazette.

THE STATURE AND BULK OF MAN IN

THE BRITISH ISLES.

Dr. Beddoes' line of march proceeds from north to south. Beginning at the first extremity, he finds the Scottish Highlanders, as a rule, a tall and bulky race which is not, we should suppose, the character assigned to them in common report. But they vary very greatly in different districts. In some western islands (such as Lewis and Harris) they are rather short; in others (Mull, for instance,) more than usually tall. The people of the western Lowlands (Ayrshire and Galloway) exceed all others in height, and indeed rank first among the inhabitants of the British Islands. The men of the Eastern Border and the Merse very nearly equal them in stature, and exceed them in weight, being, on the whole, the great men among Queen Victoria's British subjects. The average Berwickshire farmer or peasant, out of the number examined, was found to measure five feet eleven inches and nearly a third, and to weigh nearly 200 lb. This is the ne plus ultra. The people of Aberdeenshire, and of other parts of the eastern coast, do not, however, fall behind. are the stalwart natives who justify the Scottish lady's retort on Dr. Johnson's definition of oats as "the food of horses in England and of men in Scotland."

DR. BEDDOES, president of the Anthropological society of London, has produced a reprint of a memoir on this subject read before that learned body, which has so much more of practical interest than is the case with its speculations in general that we feel warranted in recommending it strongly to the notice of our readers. The topic is one which interests or arouses a very large class of observers, and we must add that there is none on which more rash and superficial speculation is commonly vented. Every one, generally speaking, has some pet notion of his own about districts in which the race of man is above or below the average in height or strength, and as to occupations which tend to encourage or depress physical development. Nothing can serve better than the contents of this volume to correct such hasty generalizations, and communicate a few stable ideas. It is, in truth, a kind of handbook of the subject. Dr. Beddoes has set to work by carefully measuring and weighing as many men between the ages of twenty-three and fifty as he could collect in each several locality; or, where this could not be accomplished, by availing himself of the assistance of friends. He has supplemented this inquiry by other. examinations of special classes recruits, criminals, lunatics. But these side investigations, though curious enough in their, results, we shall leave unnoticed for the present, and content ourselves with the main purport of the treatise. The pursuit of knowledge was in this case by no means unattended with difficulties. Men could not conceive with what intent, except a sinister one, they were made to undergo the process of measuring and weighing by a doctor. In canny Scotland The Borderers on the English side, and the least amount of difficulty was found. generally speaking the agricultural inhabiBut the fishermen of some villages on the tants of our northern counties, are a tall east coast proved extremely stubborn and race, like their neighbours. Lancashire suspicious." In Ireland" the unsettled po- seems to constitute an exception, which litical condition of the country proved an we are rather surprised to learn the peoinsuperable obstacle to those who made at-ple being as low or lower than those of tempts on my behalf. Some Tipperary England "generally;" and this not only in boy's fairly took to their heels when it was the cotton region. Good stature prevails proposed to measure them!" In Wales generally as far south as the Trent, or

These

Yes, and where will you find such horses and such men?" The average height of man throughout Scotland is estimated, somewhat conjecturally, at five feet seven inches and a half.

OF AN ISLAND.

From Nature.

American lines come nowhere into contact, NOVEL TELEGRAPHY - ELECTRIFICATION or even into the neighbourhood of the French line. The two stations are several hunA CURIOUS discovery has been made by dred yards apart, and yet messages sent at Mr. Gott, the superintendent of the French one station are distinctly read at the other company's telegraph station at the little is-station; the only connection between the land of St. Pierre Miquelon. There are two being through the earth; and it is quite two telegraph stations on the island. One, clear that they would be so received and worked in connection with the Anglo-Ameri- read at fifty stations in the neighbourhood can company's lines by an American com- all at once. The explanation is obvious pany, receives messages from Newfoundland enough: the potential of the ground in the and sends them on to Sydney, using for the neighbourhood of the stations is alternately latter purpose a powerful battery and the raised and lowered by the powerful battery ordinary Morse signals. used to send the American signals. The potential of the sea at the other end of the short insulated line remains almost if not wholly unaffected by these, and thus the island acts like a sort of great Leyden jar, continually charged by the American battery, and discharged in part through the short insulated French line. Each time the American operator depresses his sending key, he not only sends a current through his lines, but electrifies the whole island, and this electrification is detected and recorded by the rival company's instruments.

The second station is worked by the French Transatlantic Company, and is furnished with exceedingly delicate receiving instruments, the invention of Sir William Thomson, and used to receive messages from Brest and Duxbury. These very sensitive instruments were found to be seriously affected by earth-currents; i.e., currents depending on some rapid changes in the electrial condition of the island; these numerous changes caused currents to flow in and out of the French company's cables, interfering very much with the currents indicating true signals. This phenomenon is not an uncommon one, and the inconverience was removed by laying an insulated wire about three miles long back from the station to the sea, in which a large metal plate was immersed; this plate is used in practice as the earth of the St. Pierre station, the changes in the electrical condition or potential of the sea being small and slow, in comparison with those of the dry rocky soil of St. Pierre. After this had been done, it was found that part of the so-called earthcurrents had been due to the signals sent by the American company into their own lines, for when the delicate receiving instrument was placed between the earth at the French station and the earth at the sea, so as to be in circuit with the three miles of insulated wire, the messages sent by the rival company were clearly indicated, so clearly indeed, that they have been automatically recorded by Sir William Thomson's syphon recorder.

It must be clearly understood that the

No similar experiment could be made in the neighbourhood of a station from which many simultaneous signals were being sent; but it is perfectly clear that unless special precautions are taken at isolated stations, an inquisitive neighbour owning a short insulated wire might steal all messages without making any connection between his instrument and the cable or land line. Stealing messages by attaching an instrument to the line was a familiar incident in the American War; but now messages may be stolen with perfect secrecy by persons who nowhere come within a quarter of a mile of the line. Luckily, the remedy is simple enough.

All owners of important isolated stations should use earth-plates at sea, and at sea only. This plan was devised by Mr. C. Varley many years ago to eliminate what we may term natural earth-currents, and now it should be used to avoid the production of artificial earth-currents which may be improperly made use of.

FLEEMING JENKIN.

A TALE OF A TRUMPET. At one of the en- | peas, and put up her trumpet to hear his reply tertainments recently given to the Duke of Edin- to her question. The unlucky Khitmutgar, misburgh in India, an old lady was present, who, understanding her wishes, instantly transferred being afflicted with deafness, carried an ear- a bountiful helping of peas to the open mouth of trumpet. She had occasion to summon one of her acoustic instrument. The Graphic. the table-servants, who was carrying a dish of

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