diphtheria and croup, 4; scarlet fever, 3; phthisis, 4; bronchitis, 5; broncho-pneumonia, 3; pneumonia, 5; cancer, 1. Contagious and infectious diseases reported: diphtherian-croup, 24; scarlet fever, 32; typhoid fever, 7; smallpox, 1.

NORTH CAROLINA.-Bulletin of State Board reports for November, 1902: Twenty-five towns with an aggregate population of white, 80,400; colored, 57,550: 137,950. Aggregate deaths, 230-126 colored; 87 under five years of age; still born, 18. Death rates, white, 15.5; colored, 26.3: 20.0.

Deaths from typhoid fever, II; malarial fever, 14; consumption, 13; diarrhoeal diseases, 23; smallpox reported in nineteen counties, an aggregate of 394 cases, no deaths.

OHIO. Cleveland, 400,000. Report for December, 1902: Deaths, 548-65 under 5 years; annual death rate, 16.44. Deaths from typhoid fever, 8; smallpox, 15; diphtheria and croup, 38; tuberculosis of lungs, 52; bronchitis, 18; pneumonia, 48; heart diseases, 31; cancer, 16.

PENNSYLVANIA.-Philadelphia, 1,349,712. Report for week ended January 3, 1903: Deaths, 532-130 under five years. Deaths from consumption, 65; typhoid fever, 10; diphtheria and croup, 13; whooping cough, 4; smallpox, I; cancer, 18.

Pittsburg, 346,000. Report of the Bureau of Health for week ended January 3, 1903: Deaths, 175-61 under five years; annual death rate, 26.04. Deaths from typhoid fever, 5; smallpox, 7; consumption, 12; pneumonia, 25; cancer, 2.

Cases of infectious diseases reported: Smallpox, 16; diphtheria and croup, 24; scarlet fever, 8; typhoid fever, 57.

CUBA.-Havana, 275,000-73,000 colored. The Chief Sanitary Officer reports for November, 1902: Total mortality, 418-114 under five years. Annual death rate, 18.48. Deaths from typhoid fever, 5; tetanus, 8; intermittent fever, 2; tuberculosis of lungs, 78; cancer, 19. Havana and the rest of the island continue to be free from yellow fever and smallpox.

THE PLAGUE PANDEMIC.

The Local Government Board has published a thick volume of reports and papers on bubonic plague by Dr. R. Bruce Low. During the three years dealt with in Dr. Low's report, plague has

become widespread, and has extended to every continent. Not until the wave has once more receded and opportunity has been thus afforded for weighing all the facts now being accumulated throughout the world can the epidemiologic, administrative, or other lessons to be learned from it be summarized. The records to which Dr. Low has had access, though they go to confirm belief that as regards plague man and the rat are reciprocally infective, do not afford sufficient data for determining the degree to which man is in danger through the rat. So far as the plague ashore is concerned, it appears that in some localities man and the rat suffered from plague coincidently; that in others man suffered before the rat; and that in others the rat suffered before man. When in a particular district the one (man or the rat) has suffered plague antecedently to the other, the interval between invasion of the first and of the second species has been often variable, extending sometimes over weeks and months. Plague may prevail largely among men without rats becoming conspicuously affected, and conversely, the disease may cause large mortality among rats of a locality while exempting man. As regards plague on shipboard, similar facts were forthcoming. The disease does not, under conditions of sea transit, appear to be at all readily conveyed from the rat to man or from man to the rat.

Since the autumn of 1896 plague has been epidemic in India. Official reports fall far short of the actual mortality, but it is known that during the period from September, 1896, to the end of June, 1901, there were 659,864 attacks and 525,401 deaths in the population, which in 1891 was 287,317,048. Cholera is regarded with far less fear than plague, though the ravages of the former disease far exceed those of the latter. The total deaths recorded from cholera for the years 1896, 1897, 1898, 1899 and 1900, were 2,148,149, while those from plague were 403,671.

CANCER VICTIMS INCREASING.

While the death rate of London during the last ten years has declined from 21 per 1,000 to 17.1, and the deaths from consumption in a corresponding ratio, the number of deaths from cancer has greatly increased. In 1901 this disease claimed 3,982 victims, being at the rate of .93, as compared with .78 in 1891, and .42 in 1851-60. The age at which cancer most affects people is indicated by the fact that 398 died at the age of 35 to 45, 891 between 45 and 55, 1,124 between 55 and 65, 928 between 65 and 75, and 394 between 75 and 85.

The report shows that an act for the cleaning of persons, which evoked much humor in Parliament under the title of the Verminous Persons bill, has met with unexpected success in Marylebone, where 3,967 males and 135 females were cleansed within the year and their clothes disinfected.

The medical officer urges the desirability of inculcating in the young the habit of bathing, and recommends the system adopted in Norway, Germany and Denmark, where spray baths are provided in connection with schools.

DECREASE IN THE POPULATION OF IRELAND.

The report of the Census Commissioners relating to Ireland shows that the population in 1901, including the members of the naval and military service in the country, was 4,458,775-2,200,400 males and 2,258,735 females; in 1891 it was 4,704,750-2,218,953 males and 2,385,796 females. There was, therefore, in the ten years a decrease of 245,975 persons, or 5.23 per cent. The only county in which an increase of population took place was Dublin, with 6.3 per cent. There is a marked diminution, amounting to 12.2 per cent., in the number of children and young persons under 20 years of age in 1901, as compared with 1891. The emigrants from Ireland numbered during the last decade 430,993-200,125 males and 230,868 females; in the previous decade the emigrants amounted to 768,105. The total for the past fifty years is 3,846,395, and 71.5 per cent. were between the ages of 20 and 45; 89 per cent. of the total go to America, and 6 per cent. to Great Britain.

INCREDULITY DUMBFOUNDED.

In an address some time ago, the late Dr. George P. Hays told a story of an old German in Pennsylvania who, meeting a young infidel who was to speak at the schoolhouse in the evening, said: "Is you de young man vot iss to schpeak dis ebening?" "Yes, sir, I am." "Vell, vot you schpeak aboudt?" "My subject, sir, is this: 'Resolved, That I will never believe anything that I do not understand.'" "Oh, my! is dot id? Vell, now, you shoost dake von leedle egg-sample. Der, you see dot field, my pasture ober dere? Now, my horse he eat der grass and it comes up all hair ober hees pack. Den my sheep he eat shoost der same grass, and id grows vool all ober him. Und now, vot you dink? My goose he eat der grass toc, und sure's I dell you, it comes up all ober him fedders. You understand dot? do you? Heigh!-The Bible Advocate.

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE.

THE OUTLOOK.

The January Magazine Number of "The Outlook" contains some six or eight illustrated articles, besides full-page portraits, poems, a story and the usual very full editorial treatment of current history and literature. Among the illustrated articles are: "In Delhi," by W. F. Dix, a talk about the great Indian city where in January was held the imperial "durbar" or proclamation of Edward VII. as Emperor of India, truly a magnificent spectacle; the Hon. John D. Long contributes the third in his series of articles on "The New American Navy," called "The Organization and Education of the Navy," and the article is illustrated with an original drawing by Henry Reuterdahl and portraits; and portraits and sketches of the new French ambassador, M. Jusserand, of Mr. Strachey, editor and proprietor of the London "Spectator," who is visiting this country, and of Mr. Cannon, who will almost certainly be the Speaker of the next House of Representatives. Mr. Augustine Birrell, the author of that most charming book, “Obiter Dicta,” writes not only instructively, but with decidedly entertaining anecdotes about the history of the Bodleian Library at Oxford, which has just celebrated its threehundredth anniversary; Mr. James Barnes, the author of several naval histories and stories, tells a strange chapter of United States history under the title, "The Tragedy of the Lost Commission," with quaint illustration; "The Italian Immigrant in America" is a subject treated with special knowledge and wide human interest by Mr. W. E. Davenport, while the types of the Italians are shown by really fine photographs; a winter article, with strikingly beautiful pictures, is contributed by Mr. Oscar von Engeln.

DEMOCRACY? THEN, NO SERVANT CLASS!

"People who have been brought up in households where there is an organized underworld of servants, are incurably different in their social outlook from those who have passed a servantless childhood. They never quite emancipate themselves from the conception of an essential class difference, of a class of beings inferior to themselves. They may theorize about equality, but theory is not belief. They will do a hundred things to servants

that between equals would be, for various reasons, impossible. Sincere, real democracy and a servant class are incompatible things; of that I am exceptionally certain. The Englishwoman and the Anglicized American woman of the more pretentious classes honestly regard a servant as physically, morally and intellectually different from themselves, capable of things that would be incredibly arduous to a lady, capable of things that would be incredibly disgraceful, under obligations of conduct no lady observes, incapable of the refinement to which every lady pretends. It is, to me, one of the most amazing aspects of contemporary life, to sit and converse with some smart, affected, profoundly uneducated, flirtatious woman, about her housemaid's followers. There is such an identity; there is such an abyss."-H. G. Wells, in the January "Cosmopolitan."

"THE BETTER WAY AS TO LABOR."

In citing specific instances of good feeling between workmen and employers, the editor of the "Century," in the January number, writes thus:

"We wish to call attention to another principle involved in the labor question, namely, that the workingman is entitled to something more than his 'wage'; that the law of supply and demand, though it inevitably is felt in the so-called 'labor-market,' is not the only law to be obeyed; that something more, even, than fairdealing, namely, human sympathy, is to be exercised by the employer; and, by the same principle, that the workingman should reciprocate this sentiment of consideration and sympathy.

"It is not difficult to gather together incidents showing the excesses the crimes-of zeal on the part of unionism. Such arraignments are extremely useful, for they show to the honest and thoughtful components of the labor element, and they exhibit to the community at large, the extreme danger of certain tendencies. But it is also of great use, as it is a much pleasanter task, to contemplate from time to time the other side of the picture and to name instances where right feeling and right treatment on the part of employers have been met by right feeling and manly behavior on the part of the employed.

"A fresh, and in some of its details picturesque, instance of the right relation between employer and employed occurred at the time of the recent election in Pennsylvania, a highly gratifying accompaniment of which was the overthrow of the reigning po