SELECTED ARTICLES.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 157, 21 October 1876, Page 2

SELECTED ARTICLES.

VITAL STATISTICS OF ENGLAND We take the following from an Englisl contemporary :—ln the last annual repoi of the British Registrar-General of Birth* Deaths, and Marriages, a chapter is de voted to the comparative duration of tl life of persons engaged in various occupa tions. From this it appears that the ava age mortality of butchers and fishmongei is very high; the publicans suffer, moi from fatal disease than the members < almost any other known class. Clergj men and barristers, from twenty-five I forty-five, experience low rates of morii lity. Solicitors experience the full aw age mortality after the age of thirty-fto Physicians and surgeons, from youth upt the age of forty-five, experience a morti lifcy much above the average ; after tfo they differ little from the average. Tl mortality of chemists and druggists i high; commercial clerks, exceptional high ; railway servants, high ; veterinai surgeons and farriers, very high; cai penters and workers in wood generallj low at all ages; drapers, above the ava age, owing to the. jindoor work ; barbers high; shoemakers,! a rate below the ava age, except from twenty to twenty-five an at advanced ages ; tailors, much above ti average; bakers, a little above the ava age; grocers, a low rate; tobacconisi suffer very much at all the younger age indicating that the use of tobacco is pre judicial to young men. One of the moi gratifying exhibits made in respe to factory hands, andthereport saystb the wool, silk, and cotton manufacturin population no longer experience an excep tionally high mortality-.

A WARNING TO DRUNKARDS. In Sydney a man named Patrick Grog! has been found guilty of manslaughte and sentenced to three years' imprisoi ment with hard labor for neglecting i provide his wife with the necessaries' life. The stated to tl jury that this case was not one in whi active violence to the-, wife had caused h death, but one in which a long course cruel neglect and ill L treatment had grai ually worn the-'w&nian's life away, was true that the actual cause of deri was consumption, but the case of Regii v. Plummer, 1.0. and K. 600, showed tb if her death was accelerated by the negfe of the husband to provide her with prop food, he was responsible for her deajj The learned gentleman then referred 1 the facts which would be adduced in sii port of the case for the Crown, and call! evidence. The circumstances, as prove< were that the deceased, who had been » for a long time, had been attended lj three doctors, who had ordered M nourishing food. These were not obs|fi6 because prisoner gave ni> f -- money WK& them. - Several times she had been ™ out food for a day and a night togeise The only suppprfevtlie family had was v earnings of boys, who-were wor ing at shbemalang, and who brought' the> eanjinga to ijheir mother. V

prisoner handed in a written address in ni» defence, stating that tie always took alt the money he had earned home to Ids wife, and that except for the trouble and anxiety cansed by their children they had always lived happily. Sickm.rs and. trouble, not his ttegtrer., ware thv. tv.u.H s of ln-.-w dttttth.. His Honor summed up, and the fury, after retiring for five i.omih-rf, returned a -verdict of guilty, itu i.umor, in sentencing the prisoner, said he had starved his wife. He had had wages which he had spent in drink, and the death of his wife had been accelerated by his gross neglect and shameful ill-treatment. Ilis Ifonor sentenced him to three years' imprisonment with hard labor in Dartinghurat Gaol.

AS ABISTQCEATIfc AilfrtlMETlCIAJS". Lord George Hamilton, in the courso of his speech on the Indian Budget, made one of those wonderful blunders which would destroy any politician not a duke's son with a safe seat. lie preferred to raise money, he said, in India, because if he borrowed £2,300; 000 in England at 4 per cent., " during the next twenty-five years the interest "of £IOO,OOO payable annually here was exactly £2,500,000". but then the principal was due—vix.. £2,500,0001 Ho that for a bnwt of £2,000,000 in one year they eventually would have to pay double that amount." Yes, and twenty times that amount if the money is not paid for two hundred and fifty years,, bat the process would be precisely the same in India. The assures Lord George Hamilton that the taws of simple arithmetic are not in the least affected by geography or by the height of the thermometer, and that, although he may not know it, twice two are four, even in the remote longitude of Calcutta.. We have quoted his exact words, as reported in the Tinics, and can only suppose that lie had got himself into a fog over some calculation about exchanges. !» a century the toss by exchange of sixpence en each rupeeneedless, if money can be raised in India o» the same terms —would double thigF debt,— P'uMk Opmitm.

THE EYE OF MAN IN THE Ft'TtTRE.

Science, says the Mnthmt; f*w twff CwmUt/i'y gives us interesting details about •what the human eye has been and what it may become. The Vedas of India,, which are the most ancient written documents, attest that in times the most remote, but still recorded in history, only two -colors were known, black and reel. A very long time elapsed before tli© eye arrived at the perception of tlie coto.' yellow, and a stilt longer time- before green was distinguished;; and; it is remarkable that in the most ancient languages tile terms which designated yellow insensibly passed to the signttrea■»i(jjnrnf green. The Greeks hail, according to the received epinionnow the perception of color very welt developed *, and yet authors of a more recent date assure us that in the time of Alexander, Greek painters had for fundamental colors orvly whibe, black, rod, and yellow. The words to designate btrte and violet were wanting to the Greeks in the most ancient times of their history: they called these colors grey ami black. It is thus that the colors of the rainbow were only distinguished gradually, and the great Ariostotle only know four of them. It is a well-known fact that when the colors of the prism are photographed there remains outside the limit of the bttte and violet in the spectrum a distinct impression,, which our eyes do not recognise as a color. According to physiologists, a time wilt come when the human eye will bo perfected, so as to discern this color as well as the others.