6 Proceedings of the Royal Society 
the strict signification of that term, though his experience emi- 
nently qualified him to illustrate it. His works in the posthumous 
collection of them consist of Essays on topics of a general nature, 
generally delivered as addresses to public meetings, and the titles 
of which prove the nature of his favourite pursuits, and the 
variety of his endowments. They treat of the Principles of 
Beauty, of Waste, of Decades of great events in the world’s 
history, of Knowledge, of Sleep and Dreams, of Apparitions, of 
the Relations between Mind and Muscle, of Habit, of the Criminal 
Responsibility of the Insane, of the Public Estimate of Medicine, 
of the Health of Clifton, of Medical Evidence ; and the last of 
these treatises is an address on Health, delivered at the Bristol 
meeting of the Social Science Association in October 1869. 
There is none of these able essays, distinguished alike by sound 
sense, ingenious views, logical discussion, and purity of style, 
which might not be analysed here with credit to his memory, and 
advantage to those now listening to me. But I must remember 
that brevity is the first essence of this Presidential Address ; and, 
therefore, I shall confine myself to a single paper, probably indeed 
not the most attractive of them for the general reader, but which 
illustrates well Dr Symonds’ ability as a statistical inquirer and 
critic. In an address delivered at Bath, he tells us that “ a severe 
shock was inflicted on the sanitary sensibilities of Clifton,” by 
the town being gibbeted in the “ Times” newspaper, on the authority 
of the Registrar-GreneraPs mortality returns, as “ the most mortal 
of watering places,” — because, while at Torquay, Cheltenham, the 
Isle of Wight, &c., the annual death rate in every 1000 of the 
population ranged from 15 to 17 only, in Clifton it mounted so 
high as 24. The truth, as demonstrated by Symonds, is an admir- 
able illustration of the frequent fallacy of statistics, and the 
danger when rash, ill- trained minds dare to deal with them. Dr 
Symonds shows that the supposed high death-rate is founded on 
a single quarterly return, while the returns taken from other 
quarters of the same year, or from other years, vary so much as 
from 24 down to so low as 14-8 in 1000 of the population ; and 
he shows further that the returns made use of in the 4 1 Times” 
do not apply to Clifton the watering-place at all, but that the 
newspaper writer had committed the ridiculous mistake of con- 
