been in a great measure owing to the rapidly increased number of minor accidents occurring amongst the manufacturing population, and which, whilst they added little to the cost, tended greatly to swell the number of the out-patient list, and considerably reduced the average cost of each.

There was one result indicated in this Table, which tended to illustrate the important bearing of careful statistical returns upon the economical working of a large institution. In 1837 it had been observed that for several years the hospital expenditure had been gradually increasing in a ratio greater than the increase in the number of admissions would account for. The cost of provisions had risen in three years from £1386 12s. 11d. to £1954 58. 10 d., although the price of meat had fallen from 78. to 6s. 4d. per stone, and the price of bread from 2s. 6d. to 18. 10d. The cost of wine, spirits, and porter had risen in the same period from £48 198. to £120 178. 6d. The cost of medicines, from £433 28. 7d., to £764 28. 1d. average cost of each in-patient, from £3 13s. 2d. to £4 12s. 04d., and the average cost of each out-patient, from 38. 9d. to 5s. 10d.

The

A subcommittee was appointed to investigate the cause of this increased expenditure, and for many months this committee was employed in instituting a rigorous investigation into the whole domestic management, and into every portion of the expenditure of the hospital, and in carrying out a laborious series of experiments for the purpose of ascertaining, as nearly as possible, the precise quantity of each article of provision required for a given number of patients, officers, and servants. A plan, based upon these investigations and experiments, was adopted, for making a careful periodical examination of every article of consumption, so as to ensure that, whilst there should be a liberal allowance of every necessary wherever required, there should be no waste or extravagance; and the plan then adopted has been since that period assiduously carried out.

The beneficial result was soon apparent. In one year, with about the same number of patients, the cost of provisions had fallen from £1954 5s. 10 d. to £1669 10s. Džd.; of wine and spirits, from £120 17s. 6d. to £84 48.; of medicines, from £764 28. 1 d. to £448 4s. 6d.; the average cost of each in-patient, from £4 12s. Od. to £4 28., and of each out-patient, from 5s. 10d. to 38. 6d. And now for nearly thirty years the effect of the labours of that, and subsequent committees, had been apparent in the continued diminution of expenditure, and the continued reduction of average cost of patients, which the several divisions of the Table tended to show.

On the Intoxicating Liquors consumed by the People of the United Kingdom in 1865. By WILKINSON.

Of gin and whisky, 20,811,155 gallons were consumed, and of rum and brandy 6,732,217 gallons. The wines charged with duty were 11,993,760 gallons, whilst the malt returned for brewing was 47,249,093 bushels, which gave an average of 24 gallons per head in the year from the youngest to the oldest. The total value of this was £88,619,876. This sum exceeded by nearly 23 millions the gross expenditure of the United Kingdom in 1865.

On a National Bank and Payment of the National Debt. By F. J. WILSON.

On the Occupation and Ownership of Waste Lands. By F. J. WILSON. The colonies having large tracts of land which they bring into cultivation, the question arose on what terms they should be transferred to the public. According to the laws of England and her colonies, the country belonged to a few, and the rest lived on sufferance. We had no right to bind posterity beyond the limits of necessity. All land belonged to the community, the Government of which had no power to sell, but simply to let it for the benefit of the community and the occupiers who were anxious to cultivate it. Therefore, all lands should be let at an annual rental of £10 per cent., or the produce of the farm with a permanent right of possession, so long as the land might not be required by the community for more important purposes, when the full value should be paid to the occupier for all

the improvements he might have effected in the property. No person shall have power to hold another person as tenant, provided such person is willing to pay on the land he may farm for such improvements as have already been expended, thus becoming the proprietor. The result of such a system would be, that no occupier of land would sublet it to a tenant, but farm it himself. Should he have more than he could farm, he would surrender it for sale, and therefore the farms would be large and productive, and the inhabitants of villages and towns claiming through the corporation such lands as they may require for building purposes, paying of course to the occupier the full value of his improvements, would not, as in England, be crammed into narrow streets (for example, this very town of Nottingham) and miserable cottages, but would have creditable homesteads, which they had been enabled to purchase at a reasonable price, still paying the increased ground-rent to the State on the increased value of the soil.

On Classification of the various Occupations of the People. By F.J. WILSON. On the Disproportion between the Male and Female Population of some Manufacturing and other Towns. By the Rev. A. W. WORTHINGTON, B.A., of Mansfield.

The population of England appears by the Census of 1861 to be divided in the proportion of 105 women to 100 men, although 105 males are born to every 100 females. But this proportion is not equally distributed through the country. The nature of employment differs in different towns and districts; and as men or women find most ready employment, one or the other predominate in number. Thus in the mining-districts of Newcastle-on-Tyne, Dudley, Wolverhampton, and Wakefield; in the steel-manufacturing town of Sheffield; in Stafford, where shoes are made; in Stone and Stoke, where pottery is the staple manufacture; in Burton, where brewing is carried on; in the barrack towns of Canterbury, Winchester, and Colchester, and to a smaller extent in the agricultural districts, such as Bakewell, and the country parts of Nottinghamshire, there is a predominance of men; while in the manufacturing towns, such as Manchester, Preston and Carlisle, Bradford and Leeds, Worcester, and more notably in Norwich, there is an excess of women. In Nottingham and Radford together there were in 1861 48,424 men and 57,820 women, an extraordinary excess of nearly 10,000 women. This excess is most marked between the ages of 15 and 60. This is also the case in seaport towns, e. g. Plymouth, Yarmouth, King's Lynn, Hull, and Bristol, while in Liverpool there are far more women than men between the ages of 15 and 45. More women than men live in watering-places, e. g. Bath, Brighton, and Cheltenham.

This attraction of female labour to manufacturing towns is not likely to diminish, but will rather increase, owing to the comparative cheapness of female labour. Its advantage is in the addition to the family income, and the independence it gives to women. But it seems to be attended with considerable evils. Where married women are employed from home, or even have work at home, there is a very large increase in the rate of juvenile mortality. This may be partly accounted for, it is true, by the want of sanitary arrangements in large towns; and in the mining towns, e. g. Dudley, where the rate is very high, it may be owing to ignorance and neglect; but there can be no doubt that it is very frequently owing to the inability of labouring women to give due attention to their children. Where unmarried women work away from home, and sometimes leaving home to labour in distant towns are compelled to live in lodgings, illegitimacy increases, probably attended with infanticide, even also with the occasional procuring of abortion. Thus the rate of illegitimacy is generally high where there is an excess of women. It is marked in manufacturing towns, and in Nottingham reached the high rate, in 1864 (according to the last return of the Registrar-General), of 10 per cent. on the whole number of births; while in Birmingham, where there is an average proportion of men and women, it is as low as 5 per cent., which is below the general average of the county. Again, early marriages are thus generally promoted in manufacturing towns, though this does not seem to be the case in Nottingham, where the number of women who marry under age is below the general average of the country.

Such results are not necessary; witness the case of the Lowell Mills in America, and of Bradford in Yorkshire, where the number of illegitimate births scarcely exceed the average. The means of amendment are to be found in the promotion of family life, especially by leaving the wife and mother to attend to her domestic duties, which will promote family happiness, increase juvenile health, and decrease juvenile mortality. For this purpose also the improvement of education is much needed. Both these means would also tend to decrease illegitimacy.

The legislature might continue to direct the labour and education of minors in additional fields of employment. Employers of labour might add to these beneficial results by not engaging married women, and by judicious arrangements for the benefit of their unmarried female hands.

The paper was illustrated by detailed statistical Tables.

MECHANICAL SCIENCE.

Address by the President, THOMAS HAWKSLEY, V.P. Inst. C.E., F.G.S. THE subject matter of the department of the British Association over which I have on this occasion been called to preside is that of Mechanics; and although, properly speaking, this department embraces within its confines the whole of the vast range of mechanical philosophy, extending from the infinitely great of the universe, down to the infinitely small of the ultimate atom, yet, as I apprehend, it is our more immediate purpose to limit our inquiries for the most part, if not altogether, to those branches of Statics and Dynamics which are or may be employed for the realisation of so-called "practical ends," I now offer for consideration a few thoughts with regard to the unhappy necessity which the events of the last few years have only too sadly established, for devoting much of the science and skill of the members of the Association to the defence of the homes of the people of this great nation. Whatever may have been the advancement which civilized people have made in the arts of peace, it is only too evident that those people have even outstripped themselves in advancing the arts of destruction. We have seen in the great internal contention of our American brethren, and still later in the struggle in which several of the most important states of Europe have engaged, that war is no longer carried on by means of mere animal courage and brute force. On the contrary, we perceive, much to our amazement, I believe, that the highest branches of mechanical science and the most refined processes and operations of the mechanical arts are resorted to by the modern warrior for the purposes of offence and defence; and we are taught by the logic of facts that the modern soldier must cease to remain a passive machine, but, on the contrary, must henceforth be trained as a skilled labourer, if not, indeed, even as a skilled artisan. At the present moment the defences of this country are in a most unsatisfactory condition. Many endeavours have been made, and much money, reckoned by millions, has been expended, for the most part uselessly, in endeavours to secure our coasts against the attacks of a foreign enemy. Forts have been erected where an adversary would never seek to land. Ships of an enormous size, and carrying enormous armaments, have been constructed, which can neither sail on shallow waters, nor safely encounter a hurricane in deeper ones, which, with vast mechanical power on board, can yet not carry a sufficient quantity of coal to enable them to find their way to, and act as protectors of, our colonies, and which, for the same reason, are wholly unable to convey our merchantmen to those distant climes, without a safe communication with which the trade and commerce of England must be annihilated. Arsenals have been enlarged, if not constructed, in situations in which they can only be secured from an enemy's fire by fortifications which it will require an additional army to man. Guns, each one larger or more elaborate than the last, have been invented and constructed and tried, and floating castles, each one heavier and uglier and more unmanageable and more useless, except for special applications, than the former one, have been built and cast upon the waters to resist them, and yet nearly all naval and military officers acknowledge that this

great country is not in a position to defend either herself or her colonies against a combined attack from more than one of those foreign friends we have heretofore recognized under a different appellation. It is a function of this department of our Association to study and discuss the forms of ships suitable for the purposes of commerce and war, to ascertain the conditions under which they will attain the highest velocities, or carry the heaviest burdens, to know and define the laws of resistance to motion in water (a subject to which I have devoted a not altogether useless attention), and to apply the motive force necessary to overcome that resistance in the most economical, most convenient, and most serviceable manner; and it is also a function of this department to deal with the theory and practice of projectiles, and to contrive the means by which these warlike instruments, both large and small, may be most advantageously employed by our military and naval forces. But whilst, as good Englishmen, we feel the necessity of being prepared for war in order to secure a lasting and respected peace, we must not neglect the consideration of so much more of our science as contributes to the material wealth and prosperity of our country, and to the social comfort and intellectual improvement of its inhabitants, and, I may add, of the whole world. Before sitting down, permit me to request your attention to the many points of interest peculiar to this town and its neighbourhood. You will find here, in the lace-machine, combinations and arrangements of mechanism of the most complicated yet of the most exact kind, all tending to the cheap and rapid fabrication of an article of commerce, which has made its way over the entire world, and without the possession of which no home, and I had almost said no lady's dress, can be considered complete. The present state and extent of this really wonderful manufacture is an instance, and a remarkable one, of the effect of that law of continuity which last evening formed the staple of our President's address. It has only been by little and little, but by slow and continuous progression, that the lace mechanism of Nottingham has become developed into that condition of almost perfection to which it has now attained. The excursionists will find in the geology of this district much to invite their attention. Within a very few miles many of the most interesting formations of the earth's crust come to the surface, from the syenite at the base of the system to the more recent deposits of lias and oolite. Coal and ironstone are very abundant; and although it is to be regretted that the town of Nottingham has not yet availed itself of the vast amount of mineral wealth within its reach, yet, in the large undertakings of Butterly, Riddings, and other places, as well as the great extent to which the Midland Coalfield is being wrought for the supply of distant countries, you will see evidences of the growth of a local industry, which, as I believe, is yet in its infancy.

On the. Application of the Expansive Power of moistened Vegetable Matter to the raising of Weights. By Admiral Sir E. BELCHER.

On a System of Pneumatic Propulsion.

By M. BERGERON, Manager of the Swiss Western Railways.

The author proposes to propel the carriages through a tube by means of a column of air, and not to use exhaustion. This column of air he derives from the gradual sinking of a large bell, or succession of bells, after the manner of a gasholder. The raising of the bells will be effected by means of the direct action of hydraulic power from an elevated head, where such is available, and in any case the power, whether water or steam, used for raising the bell is only auxiliary, as the ascending carriages will drive the air before them, and thus raise the bell a certain portion of the necessary elevation, M. Bergeron is about to construct a short line on this system at Lausanne, for connecting that town with the terminus of the present railway there. The tube is to be constructed of concrete, the materials for which can be obtained at a low cost.

On the Action and Effect of Flame in Marine Boilers. By N. P. BURGH.

On an Hydraulic Coal-cutting Machine. By W. E. CARRETT. The machine, by means of a series of ingenious mechanical arrangements, is capable of being most readily adjusted and moved to suit the various conditions under which it is required to be used in the pit; and these could only be made intelligible by means of elaborate diagrams or inspection of the machine itself, or the model. The principle on which the machine works is that of the planing and slotting machine, the cutters acting by direct continuous pressure derived from a column of water, and not by blows. The machine has been in successful operation for more than two years.

On the Counterbalancing of Winding Engines for Coal Mines.
By JOHN DAGLISH.

On Steam-Boiler Explosions, with Suggestions for their Investigation.
By H. DIRCKS.

Description of the Means employed for removing and replacing in a new position the Iron Columns of a Fireproof Cotton Mill. By WILLIAM FAIRBAIRN, LL.D., F.R.S.

The improvements that have been effected in the machinery for spinning cotton have given rise to new conditions, new buildings, and new appliances to meet the numerous changes that have taken place. The machinery for carding, roving, and spinning has been renewed three different times within a period of less than sixty years, the old machines having been three times removed to give place to others of a more improved construction. The old narrow buildings of former days have consequently proved unequal to present wants, and it has been necessary either to alter the old mills to suit the new machinery, or to build new ones. The latter

plan was occasionally preferred; but more frequently the spinning-rooms of the old mills were converted to the new mules, which from their increased number of spindles had to be fixed in the longitudinal direction, instead of transversely as formerly.

Immediately after the invention of the mule by Crompton, or about the commencement of the present century, a cotton-mill 45 feet in width was considered of proper dimensions for mules of 350 to 400 spindles. Two of these mules were looked upon for many years as the correct number for one man to work; and this might have been continued for a longer period, but for the invention of the self-acting mule by the late Mr. Roberts and others, which gave a new impetus to the spinning process; and in place of 400 spindles, as formerly, the mules of the present day contain from 800 to 1000 spindles. This increase in the length of the mule requires a corresponding increase of width in the mill; and hence arose the tower-like form of modern cotton factories, varying from 90 to 100, and in somecases from 110 to 120 feet wide.

In the construction of modern mills no difficulty exists, as they are built to suit the machinery; whereas in adapting the old narrow buildings to the new mules, it was necessary to break up the old mules, and place the new ones in the opposite or longitudinal direction of the mill. In mills with wooden floors, this was easily accomplished by removing one row of columns to admit a pair of mules in the middle; but in fireproof buildings, constructed with iron beams and brick arches, the greatest possible care was necessary to be observed in effecting the desired alteration, as illustrated in the case forming the subject of the present paper, where 90 to 100 tons of arches and machinery had to be supported on two columns, or one bay, in a building eight stories high, the mill being kept working during the whole time the alterations were going on.

The objection to this operation on the part of the proprietors, Messrs. M'Connel and Co., was, that the columns could not be removed without cutting them, which might incur the danger of the floors above being "brought down by the run." Each column had, in fact, to be cut in two, taken entirely out and new ones substituted at the required distances apart. As the particulars may be useful