THE VALVE OF STATISTICS. 453 



conclusions. The original faults of statistics are great enough, 

 hut the faults resulting from ignorant comparisons are greater 

 still. On the whole, however, enormous as have been the errors, 

 false as have been many of the statistical statements of official 

 reports, inaccurate as have been many of the calculations, and 

 fallacious and almost monstrous as have been many of the infer- 

 ences, political economy has, nevertheless, profited greatly by 

 what has been accomplished. The errors are gradually disap- 

 pearing, and a very considerable remainder of truth has been left. 

 We know far more than did our fathers of the progress of popu- 

 lation, the resources of the nation, the earnings of the people, the 

 cost of living, the efficiency of labor, more of criminal conditions, 

 of mortality in town and country, of vagrancy and pauperism, of 

 crowding and immigration ; and, in fact, know more of all the 

 conditions of life which make up sociology.* Legislators and 

 philanthropists could ill spare their statistical guides, lame and 

 delusive though they be, for " know thyself " applies to nations as 

 well as to men , and that nation which neglects to study its own 

 conditions and affairs in the most searching and critical manner 

 must fall into retrogression. History is, indeed, statistics ever 

 advancing, and statistics is stationary history. Science is best 

 taught by examples of errors. This is to statistical art what a 

 chapter of fallacies is to logic. 



According to Mr. T. W. Cowan, as quoted in Nature, who has written of the 

 natural history, anatomy, and physiology of that insect, the bee can draw twenty 

 times its own weight ; its flight exceeds four miles an hour, and it will go four 

 miles in search of food. Its wings, braced together in flight by a row of booklets, 

 bear it forward or backward, with upward, downward, or suddenly arrested 

 course, by a beautiful mechanical adaptation which is described in the book. Its 

 voice organs are threefold : the vibrating wings, the vibrating rings of the abdo- 

 men, and a true vocal apparatus in the breathing aperture or spiracle. The first 

 two produce the buzz; while the hum which is "surly, cheerful, or colloquially 

 significant" is due to the vocal membrane. Some of the bee's notes have been 

 interpreted: "Huumm" is the cry of contentment; " Wuh nuh-nnh " glorifies 

 the incessant accouchements of the queen ; " Shu-u-u " is the frolic note of young 

 bees at play ; " Ssss " means the muster of a swarm ; " Brrr " the slaughter or ex- 

 pulsion of the drones : and the "Tu-tu-tu " of the newly hatched young queen is 

 answered by the u Qua-qua-qua" of the queens still imprisoned in their cells. 



The soundings of the Austrian vessel, the Pola, in the Mediterranean Sea, 

 show that the water in the central basin of that sea is warmer, denser, and richer 

 in salt than that of the western basin. As to transparency, a white disk was visi- 

 ble down to a depth of forty-three metres, but photographic plates were affected 

 by light down to five hundred metres. No free carbonic acid was found in the 

 water, and the amount of oxygen in solution was the same at the bottom as at 

 the surface. 



* Compare Sargant's essay, The Lies of Statistics. 



