CONSUMPTION OF ALCOHOL IN FRANCE.

Evening Post, Volume XLVIII, Issue 54, 1 September 1894, Page 2 (Supplement)

CONSUMPTION OF ALCOHOL IN FRANCE.

The French Legislature, by doing away with the privileges dee bouUleursdecru, has, says the British Medical Journal, taken a Btep which apparently will help in limiting drunkenness, as has been done in Sweden, where drunkenness was rife before this privilege was suppressed. Distilleries were reduced in number from 170,000 to 300 ; the consumption of alcoholio diinks diminished in proportion. Formerly, drunkenness in France was an evil which existed principally in oitdes and large factory and commercial towns, but rural populations were comparatively free from this vice. At the present time, in country towns and villages there is an alarming increase of drunkenness. The graphic statistical atlas drawn up by M. Turquan under the direction of M. Claude, reporter on the Commission of Inquiry on Consumption of Alcohol in France, shows that the average consumption of alcohol in 1850 was 1 litre 60 centilitres for each person. This quantity has increased year by year. In 1870 it was 2 litres 81 centilitres ; in 1885, 3 litres 85 centilitres. At the same time that the consumption of strong drinks increased, the kinds multiplied. Less aloohol was distilled from fruits ; more was distilled from beetroot, molasses, and seeds. It is these that are dangerously toxic.

Electric lamps are now being largely fitted to gentlemen's carriages in London. The most popular are about the size of a policeman's lantern, the light being turned on and off by a button. The cost of the lamp is two guineas, and the cost of recharging threepence. j£n Englishman orossed the Channel from Dover recently in a canvas canoe, the journey occupying 10} hours. E "Vy. Hornung, the novelist, whose Australian short stories in the Esglish magazines won him some prominence, is brother-in-law to Conan Doyle (" Sherlock Holmes.") He was private tutor on a New South Wales station, where he ijot his Australian experience. The baya bird of India spends his spare time catching mammoth fireflies, which he fastens to the sides of his nest with moist day. On a dork night a baya'a ncoi ifl Mid to look like t» electric street lamp. I