554 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. VII., No. 176 



The industrial development of England since 

 1851, and her apparent position in 1881, might, on 

 the whole, be regarded with satisfaction ; nor 

 could any changes since 1881 have seriously af- 

 fected the result. The growth of the population 

 of Scotland (6f , 9f, and 111 per cent for the three 

 decades) had been slower than that of England, 

 and the proportions engaged in each main division 

 of industry were somewhat different ; but the 

 points of similarity were much more noticeable 

 than the points of difference. 



If the picture given of the condition of agri- 

 culture in England and Scotland w T as gloomy, that 

 of the whole condition of Ireland was much more 

 so. The numbers employed in agriculture had 

 decreased since 1841 by 858,000, out of a total of 

 1,844,000 ; and those who might, perhaps, be 

 counted as supported by agriculture, by 2,500,000 

 out of 5,000,000. Nor was that all ; for, these 

 reductions being proportionately greater than 

 those of the whole population, the percentage 

 employed in or supported by agriculture had de- 

 creased, as well as the total numbers. The land 

 in England and Scotland employed as many, and 

 probably supported nearly as many, as it did in 

 1841 : and meanwhile other productive industries 

 supported the bulk of our great increase of popula- 

 tion. In Ireland, on the other hand, not only did 

 the land fail to support half of those it once in 

 some fashion maintained, but other productive 

 industries (e.g., building and manufacture) were 

 even worse off, and, like agriculture, showed it 

 both in numbers and percentage, those engaged in 

 building and manufacture (taken together) being 

 10.9 less in percentage, as well as 626,000 fewer 

 in number, than in 1841. It was when taken to- 

 gether that these facts appeared so serious as evi- 

 dence of decadence. Nevertheless, the view was 

 commonly held, that, in general well-being, Ire- 

 land had enormously improved since the famine. 

 No evidence of this improvement was to be found 

 in the occupation returns, which, on the con- 

 trary, pointed to a demoralization of industry 

 likely to be the cause, as w T ell as consequence, of 

 poverty and w T aning trade, and certain to be the 

 source of political discontent. He knew that 

 figures might be, and were, drawn from bank 

 deposits and other returns which seemed to tell a 

 different story. Be would not attempt to recon- 

 cile this conflict of evidence, as to do so would be 

 beyond the scope of his paper. 



The Times, continuing its comments, says, 

 " Before dra wing conclusions as to the amount of 

 labor applied fco the soil, we have to remember 

 that much of the apparent loss is simply due to 

 the substitution of machinery for human activity, 

 and also that numbers of men now included iti 



the manufacturing class are, in fact, employed, 

 though indirectly, in extracting food from the 

 soil. A reaping-machine supersedes a great deal 

 of rural labor, but its construction involves the 

 labor of a great many miners and artisans. It is 

 perfectly proper to include these in the manufac- 

 turing classes for statistical purposes ; but it 

 would be a wanton misuse of statistics to ignore 

 the fact, when the supply of food is in question, 

 that it is the growth of food which provides them 

 with employment. Mr. Ruskin asserts for him- 

 self the right to rail at all substitution of ma- 

 chinery for human handicraft ; but practical men 

 who accept labor-saving machines in cotton-mills 

 cannot consistently object to their introduction 

 into corn and beef factories, however much they 

 may lament the tendency of ' progress ' to trans- 

 fer men from the open air to confined workshops. 

 It curiously illustrates the continual failure of 

 statistics to overtake the changes occurring in the 

 social organism, that the distinction, apparently 

 so sound and simple, between agricultural and 

 manufacturing industry, utterly breaks down 

 upon examination. There may be an actual de- 

 crease in the amount of energy applied to the pro- 

 duction of food ; but statistics do not tell us what 

 it is, because they fail to discriminate between 

 real withdrawal of energy from agriculture and 

 mere change in the methods of applying it." 



MRS. SIDGWICK AND THE MEDIUMS. 



The May meeting of the London society for 

 psychical research was the occasion of the presen- 

 tation of a paper by Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, which 

 has been looked forward to with interest. The 

 title of the paper w T as " Results of a personal in- 

 vestigation into the physical phenomena of spirit- 

 ualism, with some critical remarks on the evi- 

 dence for the genuineness of such phenomena." 

 By physical phenomena of spiritualism, Mrs. Sidg- 

 wick means those which, if correctly described, 

 and not due to conscious or unconscious trickery, 

 nor to hallucination on the part of the observers, 

 exhibit the action of a force in the physical world 

 which has been previously unknown. Such physi- 

 cal phenomena would include raps, movement of 

 tables without contact, materializations, psychog- 

 raphy, and so forth. The writer stated that 

 her experience in spiritualism extended over a 

 period of twelve years, and had been entirely in- 

 conclusive except in cases where the phenomena 

 were proved to be due to the action of the medi- 

 um. She had had seances with all the leading 

 English mediums (including Dr. Slade), and in 

 every case there was evidence pointing more or less 

 directly to deception and conjuring. The first part 



