Facing-points ought to be avoided as far as possible. All facing-points, and points leading to main-lines, ought to be provided with a locking-bar and bolts, and properly interlocked with the signals and with the electric apparatus.
All passenger-trains ought to be provided with an efficient automatic continuous brake, having brake-blocks upon the wheels of the engine, tender, and every vehicle throughout the train, and fulfilling the five conditions laid down by the Board of Trade, August 30, 1877, and highly approved by the Society. To avoid the present dangerous practice of brake-power being cut off and rendered useless by the introduction of an unfitted vehicle, it ought to be the law that the Company should not be allowed to send vehicles over the line of another Company unless each vehicle is provided with the same form of continuous brake as that used by such foreign Company.
All goods-engines should be fitted with brakes upon their wheels, and those required occasionally for passenger-traffic should have continuous brakes.
All passenger-trains should be fitted with efficient means of communication with the driver and guards. Passengers should be able to reach it without putting their hands outside the window. The present cord-system is unreliable, and the plan of having no communication on trains which stop every twenty miles is very risky to the public.
All passenger-platforms should be raised to the standard height, and all carriages fitted with a high continuous footboard, to prevent persons falling between platforms and trains.
The crank or driving-axles of locomotive engines should be taken out after they have run a certain mileage. What the mileage limit should be ought to be at once decided by the Companies and the Board of Trade.
Overwork on railways is highly dangerous, and ought to be abolished.’
HOW CHILDREN GROW.
During the International Medical Conference held in Copenhagen in the summer of 1884, a paper read by the Rev. Mailing Hansen, Principal of the Danish Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, was listened to with marked attention and interest. It gave the results of the daily weighing and measurements of height which he had carried on for nearly three years on the one hundred and thirty pupils—seventy-two boys and fifty-eight girls—of the Institution, and demonstrated facts as to the development of the human body during the period of childhood that perfectly startled and astonished the assembled medical authorities, opening an entirely new field for investigation and reflection. Since then, Mr Hansen has continued his observations; and though he has yet a tremendous amount of work before him, he believes himself able to state now the outlines of the results he has obtained.
The children are weighed four times daily in batches of twenty—in the morning, before dinner, after dinner, and at bedtime, and each child is measured once a day. The common impression is, no doubt, that increase in bulk and height of the human body during the years of growth progresses evenly all through the year. This is not so. Three distinct periods are marked out, and within them some thirty lesser waverings have been observed. As for bulk, the maximum period extends from August until December; the period of equipoise lasts from December until about the middle of April; and then follows the minimum period until August. The lasting increase of bulk or weight is all accumulated during the first stage; the period of equipoise adds to the body about a fourth of that increase, but this gain is almost entirely spent or lost again in the last period.