TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 743 



destitution, and delinquency account for about 10 per cent, of the population, 

 and afHuence for the remaining 10 per cent. 



The maintenance of a pauper lunatic in an institution calls for an annual 

 expenditure of 30^., a sum heyond the reach of 80 per cent, of the population. 



The lunacy statistics of the last two decades contrasted and the geographical 

 distribution ot'lunacy (1901) set out {vide shaded map). 



Between the lunacy ratios of the four main areas of Scotland with economic, 

 ethnic, and geographical dilierences there are percentage differences respectively of 

 94, 72, and 62.' 



Controversion of views put forward to the effect that lunacy is going up by 

 leaps and bounds, views suggestive of a state of matters not without risk to the 

 national well-being. 



Acceptance of proposition that in large areas of country the lunacy ratio will 

 not vary except within certain narrow limits. 



Explanations of the enormous ratio differences as well as of the growth of 

 lunacv are to be found in a consideration of the following five factors in the order 

 of their respective importance. 



First and most significant is the economic one suggestive of a widely different 

 relative capacity on the part of householders in different counties to maintain the 

 insane without the aid of the public purse in whole or in part. 



Second. — The migration and emigration of the strong from rural and insular 

 districts to centres of population results in the feeble products, mental and 

 physical, of the birth-rate being left behind in, as a rule, stationary or dwindling 

 populations. 



Third. — The death-rate under 5, nearly three times greater in centres than in 

 rural districts, has the effect of removing hundreds of lunatics who, had they sur- 

 vived the neglect, injudicious dieting, exauthematous diseases, &c., incidental to 

 child lite in industrial centres, would have augmented the statistics of lunacy in 

 such centres {vide shaded map). 



Fourth. — The conditions of modern life, with its unparalleled competition in 

 every walk, abuse of alcohol and tea, errors of diet, &c., setting up a deranged 

 metabolism and disturbing mental equilibrium never stable. 



Fifth. — The views of the medical profession as to what constitutes certifiable 

 lunacy suggestive of a widened and widening portal to official registers (senihty, 

 slight imbecility, eccentricity, &c.). 



FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13. 

 The following Papers were read : — 

 1. ShiiJinng Suhsidies.^ By Benedict William Ginsburg, M.A., LL.D, 



The importance from a national point of view to a manufacturing and foreign- 

 food-consuming power like Great Britain of the maintenance of her maritime power 

 is self-evident. In that term ' maritime power ' must be included the supply of a 

 sufficiency of ships to carry on the nation's commerce. In considering the subject it 

 is necessary first to consider the adequacy or otherwise of the supply of ships whose 

 individual characteristics render them useful as auxiliaries to the navy in time of 

 war, and secondly to regard the conditions under which exist the great bulk of the 

 vessels of the mercantile marine — vessels whose individual characteristics do not 

 matter to the nation, but which nevertheless fulfil the important function of shifting 

 the great bulk of its traffic. On the first point, whilst France, Germany, and Russia 



^ The extreme ratios for the counties is repre.«ented by Argyll with 59 per 10,000 

 of population, and Dumbarton with 19, the percentage difierence being 210. 



2 The paper is published in extenso in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 

 September 1901. 



3C2 



