law-abiding than bachelors, and that widowers are worse transgressors than either. We quote an abstract given in " The American Journal of Soci ology" (Chicago, July) from his article appearing in the " Zeitschrift fur Socialwissenschaft " : — "Property rights of all kinds are more generally respected by the married than by the single. The graver offenses against property — robbery, extor tion, fraud, etc. — are committed by the married man with comparative infrequency. When he is driven to the unlawful acquirement of wealth or of material goods, he generally chooses some of the less dangerous methods of so doing. Receiv ing stolen goods, breaking of laws relative to trade, commerce and public health, forcible detention of pieces of property, bankruptcy, etc., are the forms which offenses against property usually assume among married men. Among those married at an extremely early age (eighteen to twenty-five) trespasses against the rights of property are much more common than among the unmarried of a corresponding age. This is probably explained by the {act that in such marriages poverty, if not a concomitant, is frequently a result. Incendiar ism is most largely found among the unmarried, the greatest proportion falling to the account of widowers and single men between the ages of chirty and sixty years. ... In the sphere of crime and offense against human life, the unmarried are greater sinners than the married, though not so markedly so as in the offenses against property rights. Only in the matter of careless and negli gent killing and wounding do the married surpass the unmarried. The difference in the criminality of the married and the unmarried grows less with advancing years. Between the ages of fifty and sixty years it is small; after that period it is still less. ... It is of interest to note in this connec tion that drunkenness claims the major share of its victims between the ages of thirty and fifty years. The criminality of widowers decreases with advancing age. Their share in crime be tween the ages of thirty and fifty is notably greater than that of either of the other classes mentioned. ... It has been said, in attempted explanation of this fact that widowers are, as a rule, ill-situated financially, but there appears to be no satisfactory evidence that this is true. Statistics do not prove that widowers belong to the poorer classes in any unusual degree. Widowers are especially promi nent in offenses against property; but they also
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stand first in the series of those guilty of other classes of crime. The loss of the wife very fre quently leads to mental derangement, and it is probably true, as well, that certain types of selfcontrol are peculiarly difficult for this class to exercise." CURRENT EVENTS. S1nce the recent promulgation of the Russian im perial ukase forbidding further convict transportation to Siberia, the Penal Department has been casting about for a new field for criminal colonization in order to prevent the threatened congestion in the great central prisons and penitentiaries of European Russia, without at the same time overcrowding the far East ern penal island of Saghalien. It has now been prac tically decided, subject, of course, to the imperial ex equatur, to convert the remote district of OkhotskKamtschatka into a new penal province. The Minis terial Department points out that this region pos sesses no indigenous population worth speaking of, to be corrupted by the exiled offenders, and has the ad vantage of being so distant and so rigidly isolated from European Russia that the escape of convicts so common from the Siberian settlements, will be wellnigh impossible. Okhotsk-Kamtschatka is further recommended as a penal colony by the fact that rich gold deposits have lately been discovered there, and these will be worked entirely by convict labor, thus enabling the government to reduce considerably the annual Exchequer credit of fourteen million rubles for penal expenses. Bl1nd fish were recently drawn from the bottom of an artesian well 188 feet deep. They are colorless and square-mouthed. Their heads are large, and they have legs, with four tiny fingers front, and five toes on the hind foot. Down deep in the bowels of the earth, completely shut off from all communication with the upper world, these blind animals, it is said, have hunted other blind animals for uncounted cycles.
One of the largest forests in the world stands on ice. It is situated between the Ural and the Okhotsk Sea. A well was recently dug in that region, when it was found that at a depth of 300 feet the ground was still frozen. The Royal Academy of Science of Amsterdam has paid a delicate compliment to the English-speaking world by ordering that its translations shall in future be printed in English instead of native Dutch, in or
