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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



same weight, were used a year under pre- 

 cisely similar conditions, being placed in 

 the same soups, sauces, sour salads, etc., 

 and exposed alilve to hot, acid, and alkaline 

 solutions, and subjected to similar methods 

 of cleaning. The aluminium turned to a 

 dead bluish-gray color, and lost its lustre ; 

 the German - silver changed to a grayish- 

 yellow ; the silver lost only in color, retain- 

 ing its lustre. Weighed at the end of the 

 year, the silver spoon had lost 0.403 per 

 cent., the aluminium spoon 0.630 per cent., 

 and the German - silver spoon 1.006 per 

 cent. For small coins. Dr. Winkler thinks 

 that alumhiium is to be preferred to either 

 nickel or silver alloys. 



Is Insanit}^ on the Ineroase? Do the 



conditions of human life, as they exist in 

 modern civilized countries, tend to an in- 

 crease of insanity ? A glance at the statis- 

 tics of the insane for any given country 

 would seem to require an affirmative an- 

 swer to this question. For instance, the 

 ratio of insane persons in England in the 

 year 1859 was 18.67 to 100,000 persons; 

 in 1865 it was 21. 73 ; in 1870, 24.31 ; in 

 1876, 26.78. In other words, there is now 

 one insane person to 375 of the popula- 

 tion, while in 1859 the proportion was 

 about one in 540. But, as is shown by Dr. 

 Henry Maudsley, in the Journal of Mental 

 Science, the increase is apparent only : more 

 insane persons are registered now than for- 

 merly. Again, the establishment of numer- 

 ous asylums, and the better care bestowed 

 on patients, have had the effect of prolong- 

 ing the lives of the insane ; this, too, will in 

 part account for the higher proportion of 

 insane shown by the statistics. The ques- 

 tion is incidentally raised by Dr. Maudsley, 

 whether we cure more insane persons nowa- 

 days, when we treat them well, than our 

 uninstructed forefathers cured when they 

 treated them ill. " There is," he repUes, 

 " no evidence that we do." Here the sta- 

 tistics timdd Kcem to show that, under the 

 old system, there was a higher percentage 

 of recoveries. " Yet, it would be wrong," 

 remarks the author, " to attribute the lower 

 percentage of recoveries to the ill-success 

 of our present mode of dealing with insan- 

 ity ; it is, no doubt, owing in great part, if 

 not entirely, to the greater proportion of 



chronic and incurable cases among those 

 who have been admitted during the last 

 twenty-five years. Formerly, acute and vio- 

 lent cases only were sent to asylums, and 

 they would yield a larger percentage of re- 

 coveries, as well, probably, as a larger per- 

 centage of deaths. Of the admissions fewer 

 recover and fewer die each year now than 

 then, the result being the steady accumula- 

 tion of a residue of chronic and incurable 

 insanity beyond what occurred then. It 

 is a question," he adds, " deserving atten- 

 tion, whether the present practice of crowd- 

 ing the insane of all sorts into large asy- 

 lums, where the interests of life are extin- 

 guished, and where anything like individual 

 treatment is wellnigh impracticable, is so 

 much superior to the old system in effecting 

 recoveries as some persons imagine." 



TIic Rocky-Mountain Locust iu Manito- 



bat The following notes on the appear- 

 ance and migration of the locust in Mani- 

 toba and the Northwest in the summer of 

 1875 are taken from a notice, in the Ameri- 

 can Journal of Science, of a paper on that 

 subject by George M. Dawson. In the year 

 just mentioned the hatching of locusts began 

 in Manitoba on May 7th, and on May 15th 

 it was general. The movement began in 

 July, and was most general during the lat- 

 ter half of that month and the early part 

 of August. The direction was southeast or 

 south. Other swarms of locusts came from 

 the south across the forty-ninth parallel, 

 with a wide front stretching from the 

 ninety-eighth to the one-hundred-and-eighth 

 meridian ; these arrived before the Manito- 

 ba broods were mature. These were the 

 extreme northern part of the army, going 

 northward and northwestward from the 

 States ravaged in the fall of 1874. Mr. 

 Dawson thinks that the planting of belts 

 of woodland would in time effect a general 

 and permanent abatement of the grasshop- 

 per-plague, since they usually avoid such 

 belts. Their journey southward was re- 

 gardless of the direction from which their 

 parents had come the preceding year ; and 

 those of Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, and 

 Texas, flew northward and northwestward, 

 returning on the course of their parents, 

 who had flown southeastward from that 

 quarter. The normal direction of flight is 



