342 REPORTS FROM THE SECTIONS. 
districts of the Colony. Happily, however, with the increase of 
fencing, and with increasing population, this form of isolation, 
which was formerly a fruitful cause of insanity, is rapidly decreas- 
ing. Isolation in another form was first brought under my notice 
by observing that a large proportion of the patients admitted had 
no relatives or friends nearer than the old country. By a return, 
which I have had prepared during the last few weeks, I find that 
more than one half—1,038 out of 2,036—of the inmates of our 
institutions for the insane on June 30 last were, so far as is 
or relatives in this Colony. This isolation, which is something 
terrible to a new emigrant, and which lasts often for years, is 
kept up by the disparity of the sexes, which at the close of 1879 
stood at 409,665 males and 324,617 females, and to some extent 
prevents marriage ; and it is fostered by the peculiar mode of life 
both of the miner and the bushman, by the shifting from place to 
place with the seasons in search of work, and by the restlessn 
together with the constant change of associates, leads on the one 
hand to a dwarfing of all those better feelings which are fostered 
and flourish in home life, and on the other to the development of 
a miserable selfishness, to a concentration of all thought im one 
unwholesome direction, to a suspicion and distrust of ever-chang- 
ing comrades, and at last to evil habits, to introspection, to 
hypochondriasis, and to the development of delusions of suspicion 
and fear, which are prominent symptoms in this class of cases. 
Isolation is most potent as a cause of insanity, as might be ex: 
pected among men, but it is found among women also, 
whom have landed in this country quite friendless, and a large 
number of whom, in an after stage of life, live in terrible isolation, 
ers, In home- 
lan 
steads in the distant bush, from which their husbands are 
assisted immigration, by which : 
partly at the expense of friends, is decidedly better eo 
regard than one which lands on our shores a number of frien rr 
st increasing population, with less ty ri 
numbers between the sexes, with more settled modes of life, ge 
with the growth of a native-born population, this cause of 
will no doubt lessen and in time disappear. Boe 
Intemperance in drink appears in thé English beg = 
causing a percentage of 14°6, and in the Gladesville the PP 
centage stands at 8-3. It must be remembered that 30 per 
