176 REPORT—1863. 
It will be observed that the mean results of each day are more concordant 
than the individual experiments made on the same day. The errors, there- 
fore, which we have hitherto been unable to get rid of are not of a kind 
which would have the effect of making the result depend on the arrange- 
ments adopted on the day of experiment, but are rather such as would de- 
stroy one another in any long series of experiments. 
Dividing N by the number just found, we get for the resistance called 100 
provisionally, 106493470 + 61100= 10655470, 
the second term being the correction for self-induction and for scale-reading. 
Since the coil of German silver, marked June 4th, was called provisionally 
101, we find as the result of the experiments for the resistance of “ June 4” 
in absolute measure 
107620116 metres per second. 
Knowing the absolute resistance of “June 4,” we may construct coils of 
given resistance by known methods. 
Abstract of Report by the Indian Government on the Foods used by 
the Free and Jail Populations of India. By Evwarp Smita, M.D., 
LL.B., F.R.S., Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Assistant 
Physician to the Hospital for Consumption at Brompton, &c. 
Tur Meeting of the British Association held at Manchester in 1861 re- 
quested Dr. John Davy and myself to represent to the Secretary of State for 
India the advantage which would accrue to science if a Report were obtained 
on the dietary of jails throughout India, on the plan pursued by Dr. Mouat in 
his Report on the jails in Lower Bengal. The Secretary of State was pleased to 
accede to this request, and during the early part of the year 1863 copies of | 
the Report so obtained were courteously sent to me, and probably to others 
interested in the matter; and as so valuable a collection of facts could not be 
duly appreciated by the members of the British Association in the volumi- 
nous form in which they were presented, I thought it might add to the service 
which the Report will render if I prepared an abstract of it which should 
contain the most important facts. My proposition to do this was accepted by 
the Meeting of the British Association held at Newcastle in 1863, and it was 
directed that the abstract should be printed amongst the Reports * . 
The Report contains information from more than one hundred military and 
civil surgeons, and comprehends the districts of Bengal, the North-western 
Provinces, the Punjab, Oude, and British Birmah. Some of these reports are 
of considerable length, and offer much information on the natural history, 
* Whilst preparing this abstract, I have been much impressed with the desirability, I 
may almost say the necessity, of a calculation being made of the nutritive elements con- 
tained in the following extensive series of dietaries, since, without this, the reports are of 
comparatively little value, and may be likened to a bill of parcels with the prices omitted ; 
but as the calculations would have occupied fully a month, I felt that it would not be just 
to myself to undertake them, in addition to the great labour necessarily involved in 
abstracting upwards of 100 reports ; and, moreover, so important a public service should 
be performed under the direction of some department of the Government. It is a curious 
coincidence that the medical department of the Privy Council has, during the present 
year, desired me to make a similar inquiry in reference to the British Islands; and these 
are the only serious attempts which have been made in any country to determine the nature 
and nutritive value of the national dietary. The absence of the calculations just referred 
to renders the Indian returns valueless for comparison with the British inquiries. 
