180 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



trained intelligence which often runs to extreme skepticism, and the fact that none 

 of the results of reasoning from either axioms or facts can ever be entirely eman- 

 cipated from the probability of error. All of which while pointing to the fallibili- 

 ty of the mind's criterion of truth indicates its nature. 



It therefore seems reasonable to conclude that the mind gets its ideas of 

 necessary truths through the medium oifact somewhat as it gets its idea of a true 

 through the medium of light, and as the sense of touch would prove the true to 

 exist in the absence of light, so the criterion laid down would prove truth to per- 

 sist in the absence of fact; that the knowledge of necessity is known only as such 

 by the peculiar conviction accompanying it ; that this conviction is a condition of 

 the knowledge of necessity being recognized as such but is not a condition of its 

 possibiUty ; and that innate ideas are not to be found among the causes and con- 

 ditions of knowledge, and, hence, do not exist. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



SCIENCE LETTER FROM PARIS. 



Paris, June 3, 1882. 



M. Loyet has published a very remarkable work on the Health and Disease 

 of the Peasantry, contrasting those of France with the rural populations of other 

 countries. The author commences by studying the influence of soil and the na- 

 ture of land. Marshy districts play the most important role in the question, and 

 are of three classes : those connected with the seaside, the offspring of rivers, or 

 inland lakes. On the shore of the Mediterranean, from Nigues-Mortes to Per- 

 piguan, the death rate is very high ; there are localities where the mean average 

 of life hardly attains the two-thirds of the total rate for all France, namely : — 24 

 instead of 36 years. There are also some agricultural industries which necessitate 

 veritable marshes, such as the cultivation of rice, and the steeping of flax and 

 hemp. These bring about an alteration of water and air. 



On the west coast of France, there are extensive salt marshes to the delete- 

 rious influences of which the population has to submit. Then there are also ex- 

 tensive bogs. In the country, the inhabitants are more affected by the influences 

 of the soil than in the case of towns; in the latter, the state interferes to connect 

 the insolubrity and encourages hygiene. The dwellings of the peasantry are a 

 fruitful source of disease ; in the most smiling districts of France, where vegeta- 

 tion is most vigorous, the peasants' houses will ever be found to be next to buried 

 in the soil, and deprived of almost openings. It is the same picture for all 

 France ; the rooms serve for every usage, and between the accommodation for 

 the inhabitants and the domestic animals, the separation is but slight. 



