320 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



inherent weakness, they cannot last long in doing the ordinary work 

 put upon them. In Massachusetts, where property is so equally dis- 

 tributed, the comforts of home and the proper supply of food, protec- 

 tion, clothing, &c. are almost universal, and the people are so generally 

 well educated, that most mothers have a certain amount of administra- 

 tive wisdom, and know how to take care of the children, better than 

 women elsewhere ; more, therefore, survive the perils of infancy, and 

 fewer weak constitutions are broken down. Massachusetts throws 

 upon the active responsibilities of life more men of feeble constitu- 

 tions, or machines made of poor material, because they are not broken 

 down in making up. Again, in Massachusetts more people labor, 

 and take heavy responsibilities, and more burden is thrown upon these 

 machines, and more of them are broken down at thirty, during the 

 working period, forty or fifty years before they have finished their 

 work. In regard to those who survive the period of sixty, the same 

 conditions that carried them through the perils of childhood carry them 

 also through the discomforts and difficulties of old age, and more of 

 them survive to extreme old age. 



" I will call attention to another fact which proves the advantage of 

 intelligence and skill in preserving infancy from destruction. I ana- 

 lyzed the reports of births, marriages, and mortality of England and 

 Wales for 17 years, in order to see what connection there might be 



between the degree of intelligence in the domestic administration 

 the life of little children. I divided the countries into three classes. 

 In the best class 31 percent of the women, when married, signed the 

 register with their marks, and 69 per cent could write. In the worst 

 class 63 per cent signed their names with marks, and only 37 per cent 

 could write. This was the only manifest difference, but it indicated a 

 corresponding difference in general intelligence and of administrative 

 wisdom. The second or intermediate class was omitted, and the 

 comparison made between these extremes of education and ignorance. 

 During these 17 years, in the first class there were 804, 170 marriages, 

 2,935,573 births, and 443,902 deaths of children under one year. In 

 the worst class there were 749,927 marriages, 2,853,774 births, and 

 541,906 deaths of infants. The first noticeable fact is the larger pro- 

 portion of births to the marriages among the less intelligent than 

 among the better-educated families. But the most interesting point is 

 the great excess of mortality of little children in the ignorant classes, 

 among whom about 19 per cent of all that were born died before they 

 were a year old, while in the more intelligent countries only 15 per 

 cent died at the same tender age. Comparing these with each other, 

 we see that there was 25 per cent more deaths of infants in the less 

 educated than in the better educated districts. This is a sacrifice of 

 111,272 to the ignorance of their mothers/ 1 



VITAL FORCE AND CONTRACTILITY. 



Dr. Lionel Beale, eminent for his researches on the nervous sys- 

 tem, thus concludes an article in the Quarterly Journal of Microscop- 

 ical Science: "I think that every tissue or organism consists of matter 

 that lives and matter that is formed. The first is the seat of peculiar 

 change, sui generis, which never occurs in things inanimate. The 

 second manifests phenomena which, are, properly considered, physical 



