in which the number of female suicides exceeded the male, and that was literature.

That suicides are annually increasing in number, in greater proportion than the population of the United States, appears to be proved by the statistical tables recently published. The population, however, is increasing so fast in the States that it is not easy to form accurate comparisons. One would think it ought not to be so that is, in a country of promise, where food and labor are abundant, the suicidal frenzy ought to be diminishing annually, instead of increasing. It would be interesting to know what part religious monomania plays in these American suicides. But the statistics, unfortunately, are by no means carefully or accurately compiled. The Americans themselves attribute the number of suicides to their "high and fine nervous organization," so superior to anything to be found in Europe. This, however, ought to tell as much against, as in favor of, suicidal attempts. The “high and fine nervous organization," if easily depressed, will easily recover and regain its tone. Excessive elation is as bad as excessive depression. There are many instances, well-authenticated, of joy causing insanity and subsequent self-destruction.

Undoubtedly changes of fortune are more common in the States than in Europe. Fortunes are more rapidly accumulated there, and more rapidly lost, by speculation. And, although the stronger natures overcome the feelings induced by these reverses, yet the weaker succumb. The excited forms which religion and "spiritualism" take in America have undoubtedly considerable influence on suicidal mania. The mind is unhinged, and mental disease leads to abnormal developments, just as in hysteria, although most commonly in women. When the mind has been unhinged and mental disease has set in, want of sleep supervenes. Sudden joy or sudden grief, when immoderate; too great tension or excitement of the nervous system; terror or despair; all these prompt to suicide. Hereditary taint, without any of these predisposing causes, will have the same effect. If the causes be sudden and violent, the effects may be equally so. But if gradual and comparatively slow in their progress, then want of sleep usually plays an important part in the tragedy. Change of scene and foreign travel appear to be amongst the best antidotes.-WILLIAM KNIGHTON, in The Contemporary Review.

HORSES AND THEIR FEET.

Ir we say that of all brute animals none is more valuable to man than the horse, and that the neglect of any means which may promote and ensure his welfare and efficiency is a blunder not easily distinguishable from crime, we may fairly be charged with uttering truisms. If we urge that this value is not recognized as it should be, and that this neglect is miserably common, we may still be accused of wasting breath on statements which no one would think of calling into question. Every one, we may be told, is well aware that the management of horses is very faulty, that their lives are shortened by the ignorance of those who have charge of them rather than by any wanton cruelty, and that they are rendered practically useless long before their existence is brought to an end. To the plea that the same, or much the same, things may be said of men as of horses, we may answer that the blame must be apportioned to the degree of carelessness with which evils affecting either men or horses are allowed to go on unchecked or are foolishly dealt with; nor can failures to improve the condition of mankind furnish a reason for refusing to do what may improve the condition of horses. Our duty ought to be discharged at all costs and under all circumstances; but a man must have risen far above the average of his fellows if he feels no relief when his duty coincides with his interest. Something is gained by the mere pointing out of this agreement, wherever it exists; and we must remember that, if a vast amount of human wretchedness is the direct result of willful and wanton perversity, we can meet with no such resistance on the part of brute beasts. With regard to these we have only to see what the evils are; and the blame is ours, and ours alone, if we fail to apply the remedy, when the remedy, if applied, must be successful. In the case of the horse, unhappily, we do not realize the extent of the mischief, and seldom, perhaps never, fix our minds on its cause or causes. Yet the facts, even when reduced within limits which none will venture to dispute, are sufficiently startling.

The number of horses in the United Kingdom has been estimated at rather more than two millions and a quarter, and their average value can scarcely be set down at less than £30. Their collective value, therefore, falls little short of sixty-eight million sterling. That the nation incurs a loss if this sum is spent quicker than it needs to be is a self-evident proposition; that it is so spent is certain, if horses on an average become useless at a time when they ought still to be in full vigor. On this point few will be disposed to challenge the verdict of Mr. W. Douglas, late veterinary surgeon in the 10th Hussars, who tells us that a horse should live from thirtyfive to forty years, and live actively and usefully during three-fourths

of this period. "All authorities," he says, "now admit that animals should live five times as long as it takes them to reach maturity. A dog, which is at its full growth when between two and three years old, is very aged at twelve years. Horses do not, unless their growth is forced, reach their full prime until they are seven or eight years old, which by the same law leaves them to live some thirty years longer. When these facts are kept in mind, together with these other facts that three-fourths of our horses die or are destroyed inder twelve years old, that horses are termed aged at six" [he should have said eight], "old at ten, very old when double that aumber of years, and that few of them but are laid up from work a dozen times a year, the viciousness of a system which entails such misery and destruction of life cannot be too strongly commented upon." If we take the age of three years as that at which horses begin to work, and twelve as that at which they are worn out, it follows that the period of their efficiency is shorter by at least fourteen years than it should be. In other words, the nation has to buy three horses when it ought to buy only one, and thus upwards of £200,000,000 are spent every twenty-one years in the purchase of horses when £68,000,000 ought to suffice. The loss, therefore, to the nation is at least £135,000,000 in twenty-one years.

If this were all, the question would surely be most serious; but it is not all. Unless the facts thus far stated can be set aside, our horses work on the average seven or eight years; but how do they work? The collective experience of the country will answer that the work is done at the cost of frequent interruption, and with an amount of discomfort and pain which often becomes agony. It is easy to say that much of the evil must be laid to the charge of grooms and stable-men; and perhaps the censures dealt out to these men are not undeserved. They are, at least, outspoken. In the last century Lord Pembroke spoke of grooms as being "generally the worst informed of all persons living.' "No other servant," says Mr. Mayhew, "possesses such power, and no domestic more abuses his position. It is impossible to amend the regulation of any modern stable without removing some of this calling, or overthrowing some of the abuses with a perpetuation of which the stable servant is directly involved." In this state of things the most humane of masters becomes, he adds, an unconscious tyrant to the brute which serves him so well. It is a miserable fact that grooms on their own responsibility are in the habit of administering secretly to horses medicines the cost of which they pay themselves. It may fairly be said that in every case the remedy is ill-judged, and creates worse mischief than that which it is designed to remove. Among these medicines arsenic, antimony, and niter seem to be the favorites, but the list of remedies is not ended with these. The experience of ages, if it has failed to do more, has impressed on them the fact that the chief source of the sufferings of horses is to be found in the foot.

The suspicion that the foot is not treated rightly by the traditionary method never enters their minds; and they deal with the limb not from a knowledge of its anatomy, structure, and purpose, but in accordance with the popular notions, which are, in plain speech, outrageously absurd. In profound ignorance that the hoof is porous, they apply hoof-ointments, which answer to cement plastered on a wall. If these were in constant use, Mr. Douglas asserts emphatically that not a morsel of sound horn would remain at the end of six months on the horses, and shoeing would become an impossibility. If the groom be told that he is thus preventing the internal moisture from reaching the outer surface and the air from circulating inwards, his only answer is an incredulous laugh. His conviction is that the hoof should not come into contact with hard material, and that the horse can be best fitted for his work by having his feet smeared with tar, beeswax, or tallow, and by resting always on a heap of litter in the stable. It would be of little use to cite Lord Pembroke as declaring that "the constant use of litter makes the feet tender and causes swelled legs; moreover, it renders the animals delicate. Swelled legs may be frequently reduced to their proper natural size by taking away the litter only, which, in some stables, where ignorant grooms and farriers govern, would be a great saving of bleeding and physic, besides straw." "I have seen," he adds, "by repeated experiments, legs swell and unswell by leaving litter or taking it away, like mercury in a weather glass;" and his experience is confirmed by the general condition of troopers' horses in contrast with those of their officers, which are bedded down all day. But if there are evils for which grooms are, in large measure, directly responsible, and the abolition of which they would beyond doubt stoutly resist, there are others in which masters are not less blameworthy than their men, and from which the public generally, as well as the animals, are constant sufferers. The work of the horse is that of dragging and carrying, and the aim of the owner should be the accomplishment of this work with the utmost possible sureness and with the fewest accidents. Serious and fatal injuries may be the result of stumblings and slippings, not less than of actual falls; and the premature wearing out of horses by excessive straining of their sinews and muscles is a direct pecuniary loss to the owners, although few of them seem to realize the true significance of the fact. These evils are to be seen everywhere, and they affect horses kept for the purpose of pleasure and ostentation almost as much as those which spend their days in a round of monotonous drudgery. A horse should not be obliged to work in going down a hill, but, in fact, they are subject to the severest strain just when they ought to have none, if they are harnessed to springless carts or wagons without brakes. Farm horses suffer with terrible severity from this cause, but the horses used in carrying trades and by railway companies undergo a more cruel ordeal. Improvements in the

brake-power of wagons used on roads, which might greatly lessen the mischief, are not made, and hence the horses are seldour free from diseases more or less serious, which may be traced directly to constant slipping and shaking over slippery pavements. Among ignorant owners, blind to their own interests, there is an impression that "the work which kills one horse will bring in money enough to buy another;" but experience has sufficiently shown the fallacy of this theory, whether the overtaxed slave be a horse or a human being. In towns and cities, the roads are and must be paved, and the payings at present are variously of stone, wood, or asphalt, where the road is not macadamized. These pavements have, it would seem, each its own peculiar dangers for the horses which use them, and each has thus become a fruitful source of countroversy. If any one method be likely to supersede the rest, the victory will probably be for the asphalt; but horses are found to slip seriously upon it, and the falls so caused are, we are told, of a graver kind than those on pavements of other sorts. All the proprietors of cabs, omnibuses, and railway vans have, it is said, protested in a body against its use, but scarcely, it would seem, to good purpose. Fresh contracts have been signed for pavements of asphalt, and others will probably follow. In the meanwhile horses have to pass, perhaps in a single morning, from macadamized roads to roads paved with asphalt, wood, or stone-in other words, over roads made of widely different materials, which call in each case for a different action of the foot. On the other hand, the hoof is supposed to be protected by shoes, the varieties of which are legion; and thus the controversy has been brought to a singular issue. On one side it is urged that there should be a uniform system of paving enforced on all towns, so that horses should no longer pass from a less slippery road to one that is more slippery, on the other the contention is that the true remedy lies not in uniformity of paving, but in the discovery of a shoe which shall effectually prevent the horse from slipping anywhere. The former alternative is visionary; the latter has been, and perhaps it may be said, still is, the object aimed at by some who have a thorough acquaintance with the structure of the horse, and the most disinterested wish to promote his welfare. We may, therefore, safely pay no heed to the lamentations of those who believe that "the difficulty in riding or driving through the London streets arises from the variety of the pavements in use," and that "if we had a uniform kind of pavement, a shoe for universal use would be quickly invented." We may please ourselves with fancying that "the ingenuity of man would devise horseshoes to travel over glass, were glass the only pavement in use.' The main question is, whether mankind after all has not been forestalled in this invention; and, it is absolutely certain that those who have labored most conscientiously to improve the shoeing of horses, have striven especially to secure for them the power of moving safely over materials of many kinds.