522 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Arrests for insanity (females) 1,097 Police records. 



Suicide 2,946 Police and coroner's records. 



Deaths 74,793 Board of health records. 



Policemen oflF duty for sickness 191,137 Police records. 



Clerical errors :;' 3,698 Bank records. 



The whole niunber of data considered is 497,262. 



The only influences which I wish to discuss in this paper are those 

 of calms. For present purposes I have considered those days as calm, 

 for which the total registration of the anemometer for the twenty-four 

 hours was less than 100 miles. This would mean an average hourly 

 movement of about 4 miles. 



To explain more fully the data given above and discuss them: 

 Under 'Registration in the Public Schools' is shown the exact number 

 of single day's attendance which the registers of the schools studied 

 would have shown if none of the pupils had been absent. As a matter 

 of fact 9.2% were regularly absent. These absences were of course dis- 

 tributed throughout the whole school year, and, consequently, through- 

 out all kinds of weather. As would naturally be expected, they varied 

 to a marked degree with the weather. On excessively hot and cold days, 

 on very windy or rainy days, there was a falling off in attendance for 

 reasons that are patent. 



The fact of importance from the standpoint of our present study 

 is the falling off on calm days. For the two years studied, the average 

 of absences for days upon which the total movements of the wind was 

 less than 100 miles, was 29%: more than three times the average for 

 all kinds of weather, — an excess of 214% based upon the expected, or 

 average number. Here is something which on a priori grounds would 

 scarcely have been looked for. Why were the pupils at home ? The most 

 logical answer to that question is, I believe, that they were not well 

 enough to go. That they were suffering from some of the many indis- 

 positions to which childhood is subject. Not necessarily measles, nor 

 mumps, nor scarlet fever, but the simple lack of condition which the 

 woman in the next flat understands perfectly when his mother remarks 

 that 'Johnnie was not feeling well this morning, so I kept him home 

 from school.' To be sure, other matters keep the children home on calm 

 days, such as company, funerals and parades, but these things occur 

 just as frequently in other kinds of weather and we can not reasonably 

 suppose that the conditions which we have found are due to them. 



The next class of data has to do also with deportment, though not 

 in public schools. It is marked 'Deportment in the Penitentiary,' and 

 is based on the record of the prisoners committed to solitary confine- 

 ment in the dark cells at the penitentiary on Randall's Island. The 

 number so punished for misdemeanors occurring on calm days was 

 80% of the daily average for all kinds of weather, showing a deficiency 

 of 20%. 



