The greatest number of deaths from diseases not specified were, 14 from apoplexy, arising principally from drinking inordinately of spirituous liquors ; 8 from small-pox; 6 from enteritis; 6 from dropsies; 6 from wounds and accidents; and 4 from atrophia. Except the deaths from enteritis, five of which occurred in the first quarter, none of them appear to belong to any particular season. The admissions, both with enteritis and apoplexy, very little exceeded the deaths. The number admitted with fevers in the second and third quarters was more than double that of the first and fourth. The mortality from pneumonia, on the contrary, was greater; and rheumatism was more prevalent in the spring and summer, than in the winter. These results are, I believe, contrary to popular opinion, and, perhaps, to popular experience. The following shows the ratio of mortality in the Army in Lower Canada, from 1820 to 1831: The mean annual mortality was 1.333 per cent. The mean, during the same period in Upper Canada, was 1.253 per cent. This, however, cannot be considered of superior healthiness in the upper province, as some (though probably very few) of the persons who died in the military hospitals of Quebec were invalids on their way home from Upper Canada. The mortality was considerable in the upper province in 1828 and 1829, when the troops in the lower province were healthy. It was pretty equal in 1830; but in 1831, was light in the upper province (only one per cent.); whilst it was above the average in Lower Canada. The annexed Table shows the mortality by different diseases in the military hospitals of both Canadas, from 1810 to 1822. Though it does not assist our inquiry into the diseases of different seasons; yet it is valuable in other respects, particularly in enabling us to estimate the prevalence or Year. Average strength of the Number of sick admitted during each year. General Abstract of Deaths in Hospitals of the Army serving in Canada, from the 21st of December, 1809, to 20th December, 1822. Total number of sick treated during each year. Fevers. Diseases. :: Pneumonia. Enteritis. Hepatitis. Variola. Rubcola. Phthisis and Catarrh. Dysentery. Diarrhoea. Apoplexy. Dropsies. Wounds and Other Diseases. 4. 9522 7 322 11 64 43 Total Mortality. Mortality per cent. 2.128 infrequent occurrence, and adding a column of per centage :made is the condensing under one head several diseases of comparatively prepared for the Army Medical Department, the only alteration I have mortality of particular diseases at different periods. It is copied from one 18 52 310 124 2461 2.540 It may be well to mention, that Dr. Kelly states, that a late census of Quebec and Montreal shews that the males in each city are less numerous than the females. The number of births to a marriage in Lower Canada, six. The lowest rate of mortality in the province, according to the registers, to the year 1831, was in 1799 and 1816, being in the former year one in 52.72, in the latter, one in 54.3. The greatest mortality within the same period was in 1810 and 1820, being in the first one in 33.14, in the last, one in 34.5; some parts of the province differing greatly from others in these years. The greatest proportion of marriages occurred in 1812, equalling one in 97 of the whole population: this was during the war, and quite contrary to what is observed elsewhere under such circumstances, but is said to have been the consequence of immunities from militia service to married men, by the laws of the colony. Perhaps, Sir, the following Meteorological Registers of the province of Lower Canada, and temperature of springs at Quebec, may not be an useless appendage. London, Aug. 5, 1835. I am, Sir, your obedient Servant, NATH. GOULD, Corresp. Member Lit. and Hist. Soc. of Quebec. ABSTRACT of the METEOROLOGICAL REGISTER kept at CAPE DIAMOND, QUEBEC, from January 1832 to December 1834. Temperature of Springs at Quebec in each Month, deduced from the Mean of all the Observations, the wells being from 180 to 200 feet above the tide waters of the St. Lawrence. By Dr. KELLY, R.N. 14 2 ,, ON THE FORMATION OF HAIL. BY COMMANDER CHARLES MORTON, R. N. EMERGING Some few years after the conclusion of the war from a dozen years' seclusion in the wooden walls of old England, and imagining, that as the darkened stable gives the horse a more acute vision at night than his intellectual rider, so our lengthened abode in obscurity would perhaps enable us to penetrate deeper into the mysteries of the clouds than the most enlightened philosophers, we soared aloft, and darting our keenest glance through the misty atmosphere of gathering storms, ventured as the result of our aerial observations to assert, that "Hail is the frequent attendant upon thunder and lightning, because it derives its origin from electricity," instead of being formed, agreeably to the established theory, without the aid of the electric fluid, by drops of rain precipitated from the upper regions of the atmosphere being frozen in passing through a cold stratum of air accidentally intervening beneath, and acquiring in their descent adhesions of frozen particles of vapour, constituting the exterior coating of hoary frost which the stones are known to exhibit. We supported our assertions, with what we imagined convincing proofs of their correctness, and having the gratification of seeing them copied into the "London Philosophical Magazine," and other scientific works, without exciting any unfavourable remark, we have since enjoyed the satisfaction of believing ourselves the discoverers of the true origin of hail, regarding each successive thunderstorm abroad, accompanied with destructive showers of enormous hailstones, desolating whole districts, as new proofs of their electrical origin, which we imagined would for ever be confirmed in the opinion of our own countrymen, by the awful thunderstorms which visited Brighton and its neighbourhood last year, accompanied with successive showers of hailstones, the enormous size of which was strongly demonstrated by the many thousand squares of glass which they demolished as completely as would have been done by discharges of musketry. Our dream of complacency has been at last disturbed by observing in an extract from the Philosophical Transactions of Moscow, that a Professor Perevoschtchikoff asserts, without, however, any reference to our humble opinions, which in all probability never reached the shores of Russia, that lightning is only an accidental concomitant of hail, and accordingly that the conducting rods erected with the view of attracting the electric fluid from the atmosphere, and thus disarming it of its power to generate hail, are useless. We are not sufficiently acquainted with the Professor's theory to venture more than a few remarks upon it at the conclusion, and though in principle we believe the erection of lightning conductors for the prevention of bail correct, we are not prepared to advocate their utility, since that can alone be inferred from a long series of careful observations on the comparative frequency of hail in the places where they are erected, prior and subsequent to their erection. But now that we know the electrical origin of hailstones to be denied by one of the scientific men of the present day, we feel bound either tacitly to relinquish our claim to the honours we have so long imagined ourselves entitled to, or to come forward in defence of our theory. Seeing no reason to renounce our former opinions, which, on the contrary, as we have already stated, are still more firmly rooted in our mind, we prefer the latter course, and accordingly venture to offer the following facts and arguments in favour of the electrical origin of hailstones for insertion in the pages of the United Service Journal; as much, however, with the view of eliciting instructive remarks from some of their numerous readers (men whose professions render them so conversant with atmospheric phenomena), as with the natural desire of having the probable correctness of our opinions admitted. |