But if Paris bears the palm in self-slaughter, no city can vie with London in slaughter of another kind. Violent deaths are nearly three times as frequent in London as in Paris. As many as 2241 persons were slain in London last year; as many, that is, as would be enough for the number of the killed in a sanguinary battle: 328 were burnt, 405 were suffocated, (this probably includes children overlaid by their mothers,) 40 were poisoned, 767 disposed of by "fractures and contusions," 232 were killed by carriage accidents; leaving 469 to be laid to the account of other accidents. In the other three capitals the proportion of deaths by accidents to the whole number of deaths ranges from under one per cent to under two per cent; in London it is just three per cent. Finally, London had 132 murders to give an account of in 1865, Paris had 10, and New York only 5.
We are sorry that the last fact which we glean from M. Vacher's interesting tables must be one rather disparaging to the great Transatlantic city which we have last named. Disparaging, that is, positively rather than comparatively; and we fear that, if the statistics which we are now to quote do not reveal a terrible state of things in London also, it is because on this head our admirable system of registration has given M. Vacher no assistance at all. "Quant à la ville de Londres," he says, "il m'a été impossible d'arriver à connaitre le chiffre de ses mort-nés. Le Bulletin des Naissances et des Morts ne donne d'ailleurs aucun renseignement à ce sujet." He expresses his opinion that, if the numbers were given, London would have quite as bad a tale to tell as Paris or New York. But the figures in these cities are sufficiently startling. In Paris the children "born dead" are to the whole number of deaths as one to ten; in New York as one to fifteen; in Vienna they are as one to twenty-three. Twenty years ago, the Préfet of the Seine addressed a circular to the maires of Paris, in which he drew their attention to the great number of these children, and pointed out that it was natural to conclude that their deaths were too often the result of crime. In New York similar complaints have been made, and we are significantly told that full reports cannot be obtained on the subject. As to London, we find a large number of deaths, 1400 or 1500 a year, set down to "premature birth and debility." We fear it would be quite impossible to give an account of the number of births which are prevented—contrary to the laws of God and man alike. We need hardly do more than allude to the frightful increase of infanticide, on which Dr. Lankester has lately spoken so strongly. Mr. Humble's Essay on the subject in Mr. Orby Shipley's volume contains some very startling statistics. There are as many as 12,000 women in London to whom this crime may be imputed. "In other words," says Mr. Humble, "one in every thirty women (I presume, between fifteen and forty-five) is a murderess." We must hope that there is exaggeration about this; but if it were one in every thirty thousand, it would be bad enough—a state of things calling down the judgments of heaven on the land.
The Anglican writer to whom we have just alluded speaks with some apparent prejudice against the most obvious remedy for infanticide—the establishment of foundling hospitals, perfectly free. There may be some objections to these institutions, but we must confess that, in the face of the facts on which we are commenting, they seem to us rather like arguments against life-boats because they may encourage oversecurity in exposure to the dangers of the sea. If Mr. Humble will read, or read again, Dr. Burke Ryan's Essay on Infanticide, which gained the Fothergillian prize medal some time ago, and in which the fact seems to be proved that the crime is more common in England than anywhere else, he will perhaps see reason to conclude, from the French statistics there adduced, that foundling hospitals are more effectual in preventing this abominable evil than anything else that has ever been devised.
Miscellany.
New Electric Machines.—At the conversazione given by the president of the Royal Society at Burlington House, London, the display of newly constructed astronomical, optical, and other philosophical instruments afforded a gratifying proof of improvements in the mode of construction, and of increased skill on the part of the constructors. The large spectroscope, which is to be used in combination with Lord Rosse's monster telescope, was a triumph of workmanship and of philosophical adaptation of means to ends; and we may expect ere long to hear of important discoveries in spectroscopic phenomena. Mr. C. W. Siemens and Professor Wheatstone exhibited each one a remarkable electric machine of his own invention, which demonstrated in a surprising way the convertibility of mechanical force into electricity. In these machines, a bar of soft iron, wrapped lengthwise in copper wire, is made to rotate between two other bars of soft iron, which are fixed. The rotating bar is inoculated, so to speak, with a small touch of magnetism, and then being set spinning very rapidly, the small touch is generated into a stream of electricity, which passes off with a crackling noise, increasing or diminishing in proportion to the rotation. In a laboratory, such a machine would be highly serviceable, as it could be used to generate large quantities of electricity very cheaply, and there is no doubt but that many other ways of turning it to account will be discovered. Mr. Siemens has already discovered one most important way, namely, the lighting-up of buoys and beacons at a distance from the shore, by sending a current of electricity to them through a submarine cable. That is the way in which he purposes to employ the electricity generated by his machine: his method has been approved by the Commissioners of Northern Light-houses, who intend to apply it to light the buoys and beacons that mark the most dangerous spots round the coast of Scotland. But of all wonderful electric machines, the one invented by Mr. H. Wilde of Manchester is the most wonderful. A machine which weighs about four and a half tons, including one ton of copper wire, and which requires an eight-horse steam-engine to keep its armature in rotation, must necessarily produce tremendous effects. It gives off electric fire in torrents: the light produced is intense, and is quite as useful to photographers as sunlight, with the advantage over the sun, that it can be used on dark days and at night. This light, as we hear, is already employed in manufacturing establishments, and is to be introduced into light-houses. A French company, who have purchased the right to use it in France, will try it first in the light-house on Cape Grisnez, whence, as is said, the light will radiate not only all across the Channel, but some distance into the southern counties of England. Besides the production of light, the new machine is applicable to important manufacturing purposes; the size of the machine being altered to suit special circumstances. A well-known firm at Birmingham are about to use it, instead of a galvanic battery, for the deposition of copper on articles required to be coated with that metal. In this case, the electricity of the machine is substituted for the acid and zinc of the battery, and will cost less. In another instance, the machine is to be used for the production of ozone in large quantities for employment in bleaching operations. Professor Tyndall exhibited the sensitive flame, on which he had given a lecture at the Royal Institution: or, to be more explicit, he made experiments to show the action of sound on flame. The results are remarkable. A tall flame, looking like an ordinary gas-flame, issuing from a circular orifice in an iron nipple, behaves in an extraordinary way when, by increased pressure, it is raised to fourteen or sixteen inches in length. If a shrill whistle be blown in any part of the room, it suddenly drops down to about half the length, and rises again immediately on cessation of the sound. A blow of a hammer on a board produces a similar effect; and still more so when the blow is on an anvil: the flame then jumps with surprising briskness, the reason being that the ring of the anvil combines those higher tones to which the flame is most sensitive. So tuning-forks, at the ordinary pitch, produce no effect; but if made to vibrate one thousand six hundred, or two thousand, or more times in a second, the flame responds energetically. In another experiment, a fiddle is played in presence of a flame twenty inches in length—the low notes produce no effect; but when the highest string is sounded, "the jet," to quote Professor Tyndall's own words, "instantly squats down to a tumultuous bushy flame, eight inches long." And the same effect is produced by strokes on a bell at twenty yards' distance: at every stroke the flame drops instantaneously. This last experiment is a good illustration of the rapidity with which sound is propagated through air, for there is no sensible interval between the bell-stroke and the shortening of the flame. Another flame, nearly twenty inches long, is yet more sensitive, for the rustle of a silk dress, a step on the floor, creaking of boots, dropping of a small coin, all make it drop down suddenly to eight inches, or become violently agitated. At twenty yards' distance, the rattle of a bunch of keys in the hand shortens the flame, and it is affected even by the fall of a piece of paper, or the plashing of a raindrop. To the vowel U, it makes no response; to O, it shakes; E makes it flutter strongly; and S breaks it up into a tumultuous mass. Many more instances might be given, but these will suffice to show that surprising effects are produced by sound. To the scientific inquirer they will be serviceable as fresh illustrations in the science of acoustics. Chambers's Journal.
Original.
New Publications.
American Boys And Girls.
Two Essays from the recently published volume, "American Leaves." By Samuel Osgood, Minister of the Church of the Messiah, New-York. Harpers. 1867.