TRANSACTIONS OP THE SECTIONS. 245 



tlie following seven years they amounted to £20,000, and of this £15,000 to £17,000 

 was paid towards the erection of the Town Hall. From 1825 to 1839 inclusive 

 (from the date of the first Gas Act to the grant of the charter, a period of 15 years) 

 the profit was nearly £172,000, or an average of £11,500 a year; and from 1840, 

 when he became a member of the Gas Committee, to 1859, when that connexion 

 ceased, a term of 19 years, they amounted to £660,000, or an average of nearly 

 £35,000 a year, or treble that of the preceding 15 years. The price to the con- 

 sumer during the same period had been reduced from about 16s. to 4s. 6d. (in 1859) 

 per 1000 feet ; and but tor a resolution of the Town Council in 1851, by which one- 

 half of the profits was diverted from improvements to relieve the water rate, would 

 certainly have been reduced ten years ago to a medium of 4s. per 1000 feet. Ac- 

 cording to the last published report of the Gas Committee, to June 24, 1860, the 

 amount of capital in the gasworks was £501,326 ; gas produced in the year ending 

 Jime 1860, 779,150,000 cubic feet ; rental, £154,658, which was equal to an average 

 charge of about 3s. lO^d. per 1000 feet. The price of gas within the city is from 

 3s. 8d. to 4s., or a medium of 3s. lOd. The cost of cannel, £56,177, equal to Is. 3\d. 

 per 1000 feet; cannel consumed, 76,039 tons, which showed a production of 10,240 

 per ton. By the Gas Committee continuing to attend to the quality of the gas so 

 as to secure the highest purity and illuminating power, and by the council so regu- 

 lating the price by fixing it at as low as was commensurate with the capital em- 

 ployed and the business done, they might expect not only a continuance, but an 

 augmentation of the benefits of which it had been a certain and important source. 



On the Altered Condition of the Embroidery Manufacture of Scotland and Ire- 

 land since 1857. Bij John Strang, LL.D. 

 The author enlarged upon the advantages of this particular occupation in encou- 

 raging artistic skill and taste, and in afFording occupation for females at their own 

 homes. He deplored the capricious fickleness of female fashion, which had led to 

 a great decline, and said it was to be hoped that so long as the tasteful designer 

 continued to dream after some new shape or pattern, so long as the unwearied 

 energy of the manufacturer was exerted to create new articles of utility, and the 

 restless activity of the merchant was spent on discovering some new market for 

 their disposal, the futm-e of the muslin embroidery manufacture would ere long be- 

 come, as heretofore, a pleasing and profitable occupation during the intervals of 

 field labour and domestic duties to at least as great a number as it formerly did of 

 the industi-ious females of Scotland and Ireland. 



On the Comparative Progress of the English and Scottish Popidation as shown 

 hy the Census of 1861. By John Strang, LL.D. 



If some distant and untutored foreigner happened to cast his eye over the map 

 of the world, and were told by some enlightened bystander that within the compa- 

 ratively small islands of Great Britain and Ireland there resided the elements of a 

 first-rate political power, he would no doubt feel some little surprise at the intel- 

 ligence, particularly were he, at the same time, infoi-med that within the boun- 

 daries of Great Britain itself there was only a surface area of about 57 millions of 

 statute acres. But the foreigner's sm-prise would be perhaps stiU greater were he 

 further told that, while the southern portion of the island, called England and Wales, 

 with a surface of little more than 37 millions of acres, had a population (as ascertained 

 by the late census, exclusive of the army and navy, and merchant service abroad) of 

 20,061,725, the northern portion, called Scotland, with a tei-ritorial surface of up- 

 wards of 20 millions of acres, contained only 3,061,329 inhabitants. Such, how- 

 ever, are the real facts of the case ; and those, like ourselves, who are acquainted 

 with the distinctive physical peculiarities of the two poi-tions of Great Britain will 

 feel little wonder about it. There is, however, a subject connected with this ter- 

 ritorial division of England and Scotland, and their d stinctive populations, which 

 is not so easily imderstood ; we mean the fact, as shown by the census retxims of 

 the present century, that there has existed for some considerable time, and parti- 

 cularly of late years, a marked difference in the ratio of the progress of the popu- 

 lation within the limits assigned to the northern and southern portions of Great 



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