Bourbons in 1830, the title of Dauphin has been disused. The last who bore it was the Duke of Angoulême, son of Charles X. DAVID'S DAY, ST., March 1. St. David, archbishop of Menevia, now called from him St. David's, in Pembrokeshire, lived in the 5th and 6th centuries of the Christian era; Pits ('De Illustribus Angliæ Scriptoribus') tells us that he died at the age of 146 years. He is said, in the days of the memorable Arthur, to have gained a victory over the Saxons, his soldiers during the conflict, for distinction and as a military colour, wearing lecks in their caps. In memory of this fight the Welsh still wear the leek on St. David's Day; and it is to this that Shakspere alludes in 'Henry V.,' act v. sc. 1, when he makes Gower upbraid Pistol for mocking "at an ancient tradition, begun upon an honourable respect, and worn as a memorable trophy of predeceased valour.' (See Brand's Popular Antiq., edited by Sir H. Ellis, 4to, vol. i.; Brady's Clavis Calendaria, 8vo, Lond. 1812, vol. i. p. 228, &c.) DAY. Any astronomical period which depends directly upon the earth's rotation; or the interval between two transits over the meridian of any point in the heavens, real or imaginary. But the only days distinguished by that name in astronomy are the sidereal day, the real solar day, and the mean solar day. The sidereal day is the interval between two transits of the same fixed star; that is, the absolute time of revolution of the earth. It is divided into 24 sidereal hours, &c. It begins when the equinox is on the meridian of the place. The real solar day is the interval between two noons or transits of the sun over the meridian. Owing to the unequal motion of the sun, as well as the obliquity of the ecliptic, it is not of the same length at all periods of the year. The mean solar day is the average of all the real solar days; it is derived by supposing a fictitious sun to move round the equator, and uniformly in the same time as the real sun moves from an equinox to the same again. The method of adapting the motion of this fictitious body to that of the real sun will be explained in TIME, EQUATION OF. The civil day, in England at least, is the mean solar day, and begins at midnight; that is, when the fictitious sun is on the invisible part of the meridian. But the astronomical day always begins at the noon of the civil day, and the hours are reckoned forward up to 24. Thus eleven o'clock in the morning on the twelfth of January (civil reckoning) is 23 hours of the astronomical eleventh of January. After noon, and up to midnight, the astronomical and civil reckoning coincide. The mean solar and sidereal days are thus related: the mean solar day is 24h. 3 m. 56.55s., of sidereal time; and the sidereal day is 23h. 56 m. 4:09s., of a mean solar day. The ancients almost universally began their day at sunrise, with the exception of the Arabians, who began at noon, and the Egyptians at midnight. Among the moderns, most of the Eastern nations begin at sunrise, with the exception of the Arabians, who still begin at noon, and the Chinese, who rockon from midnight. The Austrians, Turks, and Italians reckon from sunrise, and other European nations from midnight. DAYS OF GRACE. [BILL OF EXCHANGE.] DEACON, an ecclesiastical term of Greek origin, from AáKovos (Diáconus, literally, a servant), introduced into the Saxon vocabulary, and continued in use to the present time. It designates one of the orders in the Christian priesthood, the lowest of the three- bishops, priests, and deacons. The first institution of the order is particularly set forth in the sixth chapter of the Book of Acts. The administration of the charities in the Church of Jerusalem was complained of as partial by the Grecian converts. The apostles, in whom the administration had been vested, thought it expedient to divest themselves of this duty, and to devolve it on other persons, that they might devote themselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word. Seven persons were selected for the office, and by prayer and the imposition of hands ordained deacons. It appears by the first Epistle of St. Paul to Timothy, that there were deacons in other Christian churches, and probably in all where such an officer was needed. He gives instructions (chap. iii. 8-13) respecting the character which became persons who should be admitted into the office. See also Phil. i. 1. There were also deaconesses in the primitive church, one of whom, Phoebe, is mentioned Rom, xvi. 1. This female officer may be traced to the 11th or 12th century. The peculiar office of both deacons and deaconesses was to attend to works of mercy, to be the administrators of the alms of the more opulent members of the church. In the English church the name continues, and the peculiar form of ordination, but the peculiar duties of the office seem to be lost sight of. In fact the Poor Laws, by creating certain civil officers whose duty it is to attend to the necessitous, have rendered the services of the deacon in this his characteristic capacity less necessary. by the bishop, and to assist a priest in divine service, and especially in the Communion. When contemplated in the light in which this form places him, he appears as an assistant to a priest, for he is to seek out the sick and poor and report them to the priest, and in the absence of the priest to baptize. This latter permission has led to the introduction of the performance of other ecclesiastical duties, namely, the celebration of matrimony, and the burial of the dead. In fact, the deacon performs all the ordinary offices of the Christian priesthood, except consecrating the elements at the administration of the Lord's Supper, and pronouncing the absolution. A person may be ordained deacon at twenty-three. He may then become a chaplain in a private family; he may be curate to a beneficed clergyman, or lecturer in a parish-church, but he cannot hold any benefice, or take any ecclesiastical promotion. For this it is requisite that he take priest's orders. DEAD OIL. [COAL TAR.] DEAF AND DUMB, CENSUS OF THE. Till the census of 1851 was taken, the public was without the usual official means of knowing the proportion of the deaf and dumb to the population of the kingdom. No previous account of the people had recognised either the deaf and dumb, or the blind. A statement was made about twenty-five years before, in the annual report of one of the provincial institutions for the deaf and dumb, that the number of deaf mutes in England and Wales alone was not less than 8000, and it was generally received with discredit. In the 'Journal of Education,' No. XIV. (1834), it was stated that actual returns had been procured from various parts of the kingdom, from which it was inferred that the proportion of deaf and dumb persons in South Britain was 1 in 1700; and this data was generally established in the minds of those most interested in the management of the various institutions for this class. The correctness of these estimate, wo sufficiently confirmed when the registrar-general's report was published. The total number of the deaf and dumb, returned in the various enumerations for the United Kingdom, being The above proportions vary in different parts of the kingdom. The county enumerations present some notable facts to which attention will be directed, inasmuch as they not only confirm certain opinions and facts previously known, and thus corroborate the general accuracy of the census returns, but they also point to other facts both new and valuable. The counties of England, Wales, and Scotland, are grouped in twelve geographical divisions :-- I. London, comprises parts of Middlesex, Surrey, and Kent: in the repetition of these counties below, their metropolitan portions are excluded. In London the proportion of deaf and dumb to the popula tion is 1 in 1783. V. SOUTH-WESTERN Div. 17. Wiltshire 18. Dorsetshire 19. Devonshire . 20. Cornwall. 21. Somersetshire In some dissenting communities there are deacons who still discharge the duties for which the office was instituted, collecting the alms of the people at the sacrament, and distributing them among the poor. But they are always laymen, or persons who have not gone through the forms, generally few and slight, of ordination, as practised VI. WEST MIDLAND DIV. among the dissenters. There is a form for the ordination of deacons in the English church: some clergymen never take priest's orders. It appears by the Rubric that a person in deacon's orders is empowered to read publicly the Scriptures and homilies, to catechise, to preach when licensed to do so 22. Gloucestershire 23. Herefordshire 24. Shropshire 25. Staffordshire 26. Worcestershire 27. Warwickshire VIII. NORTH-WESTERN DIV. 1 in 2014 2215 83. Cheshire 1871 34. Lancashire 1874 2045 1614 2027 IX. YORKSHIRE. 1828 1 in 1717 1640 The Abbé Daras very properly says, "If a province of France produces on an average one deaf and dumb to 700 individuals; if other districts present only a single case among 2000; and if, again, between these extremes, numerous departments have one in 800, 900, 1000, 1100, 1200, 1300, 1400, 1500, &c., according to their situation, to the south or north of the empire, in a mountainous or flat country, in healthy or unhealthy places, in manufacturing or agricultural districts, &c.; it is evident that this statistical result reveals to families, and even furnishes to the administration, knowledge which may be applied to lessen or extenuate this fearful evil of humanity." The physical and social aspects of France are thus connected by the Abbé with the facts revealed in the census. "The irregular tablelands which border the frontiers of France on the north, south, and east, and the uncultivated moors which extend on the west to the borders of the ocean, produce the largest number of deaf-mutes. There, on an average, one is found to every 800 inhabitants. The beautiful plains which occupy the centre of the country, on the contrary, contain only one in 1600 inhabitants. The high summits of the Alps, the chain of the Pyrénées, the precipices of the Jura, the flanks of Cevennes, the volcanic sol of Puy-de-Dôme, the rocky Corsica, the rugged regions of Lozère and Cantal, comprehend the provinces most afflicted with deaf-dumbness. There are twenty departments which contain one deaf-mute in 600, in 700, in 800, or in 900 inhabitants, whilst those fertile districts in the interior, which extend themselves by an inclined plain from the western slope of the Alps, of Jura, and of the Vosges towards the Atlantic, contain a much lower proportion; about forty departments exhibit only one deaf-mute in 1300, 1400, 1500, and so on even to 2000 inhabitants. "With the map of France before us, if we trace to the east the continuous barrier which stretches from the woody Ardennes and the Argonne to the Vosges, and which goes on from the Vosges to the Jura, to the Alps, to the Cevennes, to the Pyrénées, along the frontiers of Baden, Switzerland, Sardinia, the borders of the Mediterranean and Spain, there will be found in Lorraine, Alsace, Franche-Comté, Bresse, Bugey, Dauphiné, Forez, Limagne, Velais, Gévaudan, Vivarais, Rouergue, Rousillon, Bigorre, Béarn, Gascony, rural populations which have lived for ages in the shades of their forests, on the craggy sides of their mountains, or near to the uncultivated borders of their marshy lakes. One can easily imagine that congenital or acquired deafness, and con sequent dumbness is multiplied in such localities in a much greater proportion than among those happy populations spread over the rich and salubrious countries of Berri, Touraine, and the Isle of France. "Having studied this general rule of topographic hygiène in all its applications, we are surprised to find it confirmed where we might expect to meet with an exception. Thus, for example, Provence and Languedoc which separate the Alps from the Cevennes, would appear naturally to produce as many deaf-mutes as the mountains in their vicinity; but no, Provence and Languedoc, being countries with a flat surface and highly cultivated, obey the general rule, and contain fewer unfortunates. It is remarkable that the departments of the Var, Hérault, the Mouths of the Rhône, Aube, Lower Charente, and those watered by the Garonne, only count one deaf-mute on 1500 inhabitants; this ratio applies also to the central level of the country, to the maritime coasts of Brittany, to the valleys of Normandy, to the chalky plains of Champagne, to the hills of Burgundy, and to the river populations of the large streams which flow in the interior. It is not so in the departments covered with thick and old forests, surrounded with mountains, torn with volcanoes, inundated by the waters of lakes, infected by exhalations from marshes. In the first rank of these are Corsica and the Haut-Rhin, which present one deaf and dumb in 600 inhabitants; then come three departments situated on the Alps, the Vosges, and the Pyrenees, which contain one in 700 inhabitants; then come Isère, at the foot of Jura, between the Cevennes and the Alps, Lozère and Puy-de-Dôme, extending along the ridge of the mountains of Auvergne, and lastly Ariège, an escarpment of the Central Pyrénées; in these departments we find one deaf-mute in 800 inhabitants. "The departments which are about to follow are under similar conditions of climate, temperature, and topographic hygiène; they are Gard, at the foot of the Cevennes, which has one deaf-mute in 910 inhabitants; Cantal, covered with a population thrown on the granite soil of High Auvergne, counting one deaf-mute in 917 inhabitants; the Lower Alps, shaded by Mount Viso and the neck of Argentière, and constantly exposed to unhealthy cold and damp winds, producing one deaf-mute in 927 inhabitants; the Eastern Pyrénées, overlooked by the high summits of the neck of Perche, the neck of Arras, and the neck of Pertuis, showing one deaf and dumb in 928 inhabitants; and, lastly, the Landes and the Jura, evidently subjected by the nature of the soil and the topographical character to the same morbid vicissitudes, and giving one deaf and dumb respectively to 946 and 976 inhabitants." The Abbé calls the attention of all who are interested by duty or by their avocations to the observation of these phenomena; he considers that natural consequences may be deduced from the facts he has accumulated, and the observations which he has made, which may tend to shed light on one of the most insolvable and mysterious problems of general hygiène. The average number of deaf-mutes in France is high compared with other countries, and with the proportion assigned to Europe, namely, in France 1 in 1212; in Europe 1 in 1585. In France, as elsewhere, there are social causes at work, producing both congenital and acquired deafness, such as the influence of hereditary predispositions, the intermarriage of blood-relations, the secluded habits of certain communities, and other conditions of life, the moral and physical temperaments, and ignorance of the nature and consequence of certain diseases; and to these, as well as to climate, situation, soil, atmosphere, and other topographical influences, a large proportion of the deaf-dumbness so prevalent must be attributed; at the same time there are anomalies in France as elsewhere, which for the present defy all efforts towards their solution. It is not possible to give such apparently plausible reasons for the greater or less prevalence of deafness in the different counties of England, as the extracts above give with reference to the various departments of France, yet there are some notabilities, as well as some anomalies, which it seems desirable to place on record. Taking the two counties in which deafness appears most to prevail, Herefordshire with 1 in 1054, Worcestershire with 1 in 1160; it appears at first sight that these two counties are among the healthiest in England, both bring to the mind hop-yards, orchards, and fertile lands, watered with fine rivers. Herefordshire, though not mountainous as a whole, is almost hemmed in by high lands; on the north by those of Shropshire, on the west by the Black Mountains and those of Radnorshire, on the east by the Malvern Hills and the Forest of Dean; Worcestershire is almost similarly enclosed, having the Clent and the Lickey Hills on the east, and the Malvern and Abberley Hills on the west; some of these hills are however considered the most healthy districts in England. It is not surprising to find Derbyshire and Cornwall respectively with 1 in 1272 and 1 in 1278 inhabitants deaf and dumb. Both experience and tradition point to mineral districts and exposed maritime coasts as unwholesome to the constant dwellers there. Derbyshire has long been known as a county in which goître prevails, and glandular swellings, arising from struma, are often the cause of deafness. Cornwall, though mild in climate, is exposed to the heavy clouds from the Atlantic, surcharged with moisture, which being condensed by the high lands in the centre of the county, pour forth torrents of rain. The prevalent moisture in this case may be favourable to conditions which produce congenital or acquired deafness. The next group of counties, with their proportions of deafness varying from 1 in 1406 of the inhabitants to 1 in 1493, are Dorsetshire, Devon shire, South Wales, Wiltshire, Somersetshire, Essex, and Shropshire; all these are maritime districts except the last; the mere vicinity of the sea in these fine climates of the south of England cannot surely be favourable to the production of deafness, and we must look for some other cause for the mysterious visitation. Shall we look for it in social causes? There is much struma on the coast, but it often arises from the poverty of the population-irregular work and wages-unequal and often poor feeding-exposure to weather-and bad dwellings without due means of ventilation; these observations apply to most of the fishing-towns in all parts of the kingdom. We next come to North Wales and Gloucestershire, with respectively 1 in 1514 and 1 in 1565 of their population deaf-mutes; the districts are very dissimilar in their physical features as well as in their geographical position; the same cause for deafness can scarcely have struck them both. The next group of counties with a proportion of from 1 in 1614 to 1 in 1674, includes Buckinghamshire, Westmoreland, the West Riding of Yorkshire, Sussex, and Berkshire. Westmoreland, with its lofty mountains and barren moors, has then to sympathise with the pleasant and fertile vales of Buckingham, and the manufacturing industry of West Yorkshire with the downs of Sussex: truly the physical characteristics here are too conflicting to account for the striking similarity in these proportions. In the next gradation, namely, from 1 in 1714 to 1754, are the counties of Rutland, Suffolk, Bedford, the North Riding of Yorkshire, and Norfolk; all these are agricultural counties, and on the eastern side of the country, but there seems no reason for their greater degree of exemption from deaf-muteism than some that have been previously named. Northumberland, Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire, Staffordshire, Lincolnshire, Hertfordshire, and Cheshire present proportions varying from 1 in 1818 to 1 in 1874, but with no apparent reason why Lincolnshire on the east, Cheshire on the west, and Northumberland on the north, should produce such similar results. The counties which contain respectively 1 in 1917, 1 in 1947, and 1 in 1958, are Cumberland, Surrey, and Leicestershire; so that Cumberland, on the Solway, is more favoured than its nearest neighbour Westmoreland, notwithstanding its greater proximity to the sea; and Leicestershire and Surrey, both inland, populous, manufacturing, and highly cultivated, have no immunity from these causes. Hampshire, Warwickshire, Oxfordshire, Lancashire, and Nottinghamshire vary in their proportions from 1 deaf-mute in 2000 to 1 in 2088; the same dissimilarity in position, and in the occupations of the people prevails here as in some of the results we have previously considered, with this notable exception, that three of these counties have large manufacturing populations, and confirm to some extent the truth of the registrar-general's observation, that "a greater degree of prevalency of deaf-dumbness seems to exist in rural and hilly localities than amidst urban and manufacturing populations." The last group of counties, showing a variation of from 1 in 2215 to 1 in 2488, comprises Middlesex, the East Riding of Yorkshire, Monmouthshire, Kent, and Durham. Here are placed together dense and sparse populations, mountainous and flat districts, and one mining county. Can anything be more dissimilar? Yet these counties are more exempt from deaf-dumbness than any other part of England, save Huntingdonshire! a small county with a rural population, and with one-fifth of its acreage fen-land. If marshy districts were productive of deafness, Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire, and some portions of Norfolk and Lincolnshire, should have this unfortunate pre-eminence; but if the enumerators of the Census are correct, these counties suffer less in this respect than many others, and we are instructed to seek other causes for the prevalence of the infirmity. We do not totally reject the theory of the Abbé Daras; to a limited extent we are able to confirm it; but we are assured that topographic statistics will not enlighten us generally on the mysterious causes of deafness. We look to medical statistics and to the economy of social life to alleviate some of the evils we have been considering. That there is some connection between the physical character of a country or district and deafness there can be no doubt. In some cantons of Switzerland one deaf-mute is found in 200 inhabitants; Norway and Sardinia again present us with large proportions; and in our own country, the mountainous districts of Scotland and the Penine chain of hills produce analogous results; the plains of England, on the other hand, with a few remarkable exceptions, generally exhibit the smallest proportion of the deaf and dumb; and so it is with the plains of Luxembourg and Würtemberg, and the kingdoms of Tuscany, Bavaria, Belgium, and Holland. In Ireland, as in England, the deaf-mute is found most in the rural and least in the civic districts; the flat counties, such as Roscommon, Westmeath, Dublin, and Kildare, show the fewest cases (1 in 1935), while mountainous Wicklow has 1 in 1031, and Mayo, Limerick, Donegal, Waterford, and also Tipperary, Tyrone, and Fermanagh, the former on the coast, and all presenting mountain ranges, show an average of 1 in 1068. Confirmatory of these views, we can with confidence adduce the following particulars: a very large majority of the pupils who have been admitted into the Yorkshire Institution have been from the district of the West, traversed by the great Penine chain. This chain commences in the Staffordshire moorlands, goes through Derbyshire (the Peak), thence into Yorkshire (Stanedge and Blackstone edge), and extends irregularly northwards (Ingleborough, Wharnside) to the Cumbrian mountains. On the east of this chain of hills, in Yorkshire, and within a few miles of them, are the large towns of Sheffield, This Rotherham, Barnsley, Holmfirth, Huddersfield, Halifax, Dewsbury, Bradford, Leeds, Wakefield, Keighley, Skipton, and Settle. mountainous district, with its towns, has supplied the Institution with 300 out of its 534 pupils; the plain of York with 35, that of Selby with 13, of Doncaster with 32, the North Riding with 37, Hull and the East Riding with 33, and the remaining number have been from localities less definitely characterised. It is true that the dense population of Yorkshire is found in the towns above alluded to, but we have already seen, and the observation has been repeatedly confirmed, that the proportion is much less in towns than in agricultural and hilly districts. A very few years ago the writer of this article visited one of the new rising towns within the influence of this range of hills, for the purpose of inquiring into several cases of deaf and dumb children resident there. He was taken into house after house, and At length he found that he was among a wide circle of relations. made the observation, that many intermarriages seemed to have occurred in the different families, and received this ominous reply: "We're all related here." "No wonder, then," he answered, " at the prevalence of deafness." And this was not a mere guess at the cause of the malady, but was the result of long-continued observation. In addition to the physical conformation or position of a district or country, the seclusion of mountainous localities is unfavourable to social developments; those who are shut out of the world by natural circumstances, or from other causes, are driven to each other for companionship and for nearer ties, and to a certain extent this may account for the prevalence of the deaf and dumb in the cantons of Berne and Argovie, in Switzerland; in Norway; in Sardinia; in Corsica, HautRhin, Isère, Lozère, Cantal, and other mountainous and secluded departments in France; and also to some extent in the remote agricultural districts of our own kingdom. America furnishes us with the following table from the census of 1850. There are other tables to which we have access, but we select this to illustrate a special point : Whites Colour. Free coloured Slaves It appears that among the free coloured population in 2956 is deaf and dumb; among the slaves only 1 in 6221. An American writer says, "In every state north of the Potomac and Ohio, the proportion of deaf and dumb among the coloured population is much greater than in any state south of those rivers, and in the aggregate of the two sections almost four times as great in the northern as in the southern states. It is also to be observed that in the northern states the proportion of deaf and dumb is generally much greater among the coloured than among the white population, whereas in all the southern states the case is precisely the reverse; the coloured population of the south it is well known are chiefly slaves, whereas at the north they are mostly free. If, then, the census has been correctly taken in both sections, we are led to conclude that deafness is frequently occasioned by the want of physical comforts, with which it is well known the slaves of the south are, as a body, much better provided than the free blacks of the north." The above paragraph was written twenty-five years ago, and referred to the American census of 1830; succeeding enumerations perpetuate similar proportions to those alluded to, and the observations are fully applicable to the census of 1850. This, however, is not a satisfactory mode of accounting for the greater prevalency of deafness among the coloured free population, as compared with the white race. The free coloured population of the north are far removed from the genial climate of their race, while the slave populations of the southern states are in the enjoyment of a climate adapted to their nature, and this is a more probable solution of the difficulty than that which attributes the freedom from deafness among the slaves to their possession of more bodily comforts than fall to the lot of the free coloured population of the northern states; besides, there are more deaf and dumb proportionately among the whites in the southern than in the northern states; these whites, chiefly planters and their agent are in no want of bodily comforts, and it may fairly be inferrred, that the high temperature which is favourable to the slave population of the south is pernicious to the white race, whether European or Anglo-American. Warm countries and plains, as Tuscany and Luxembourg, appear to contain a smaller proportion of the deaf and dumb than cold and mountainous ones. Change of climate has doubtless an influence in promoting a tendency to certain diseases in a new generation, and probably to some of those productive of deafness; but this result will only follow where the transition is violent, as from a cold or temperate to a hot climate, and the reverse. To secure the highest conditions of health, every race should therefore confine itself to its own natural latitudes. The report of the Irish commissioners on the "Status of Disease' must be considered as one of the most valuable contributions that has ever been produced on those infirmities to which humanity is subject; such a report for the United Kingdom, when the census is again taken, would be invaluable to all institutions established for the alleviation of permanent maladies; and much assistance might be obtained from the officers of such institutions f they were previously apprised of the nature of the inquiries to be made. The science of statistics has still much to do for the deaf and dumb, but the inferences from topographical causes must always be faulty in accounting for the prevalence of the malady. Mention has been made of some anomalies which they cannot explain; they cannot account for the discrepancies between the neighbouring counties of Monmouth and Hereford, between Huntingdonshire and Worcestershire; they cannot show why the healthier province of Denmark, the island of Bornholm, should have more than double the proportion of deaf and dumb that are found in Laaland and Falster, which are considered the unhealthiest parts of the kingdom; nor why, generally, there are proportionably fewer deaf and dumb to be found in towns than in those resorts of health which citizens usually seek for their salubriousness, namely, the sea-coasts, the rural, and the mountainous districts. Some additional light will be thrown on this part of the subject in the article DEAF AND DUMB, VITAL STATISTICS OF, and some of the causes which produce and perpetuate deafness, independent of climate and locality, will therein be considered. The following table is drawn from the census returns for 1851, reference being made to the pages in which detailed information will be found respecting each county; the portion referring to Ireland is taken from the report of the commissioners; special attention will be directed to a few points in it, chiefly in the words of the registrar-general :— NUMBER AND AGES OF MALES AND FEMALES RETURNED AS DEAF AND DUMB. The aggregate number of the deaf and dumb would be increased by a considerable addition to the column "under 5 years," but for the difficulty of ascertaining the existence of deafness, and consequent dumbness, in the early years of life, and the natural indisposition of parents to form a painful conclusion on the subject while the slightest grounds for doubt exist. A rough estimate of the omissions from this cause may be made by assuming the deaf mutes under 5 years of age to bear the same proportion to the general population of the same age as the deaf and dumb aged 5 years and upwards bear to the residue of the population. Under this assumption, the number returned under 5 years would be 1801 deaf mutes, instead of 560. In Ireland it is ARTS AND SCL. DIV. VOL. III. assumed on similar grounds that the number returned under the first quinquennial period should be 492 instead of 227. Under this hypothesis the proportion of deaf and dumb in the United Kingdom would be increased from 1:1590 to 1:1460. In Great Britain the greatest number was returned between the ages of 5 and 15, then between 15 and 30; after 50 there is a very sensible diminution, showing that the deaf and dumb are not, like the blind, long-lived. In Ireland the greatest number was returned between the ages of 15 and 30, with a similar diminution after 50. Of the 21,487 biind persons in Great Britain, only 2929, or less than 14 per cent., are under 20 years of age, a circumstance tending to show that cases of D D 134 blindness at birth are not very common; while 10,102 persons, or 47 NUMBERS AND PROPORTIONS OF DEAF AND DUMB IN EUROPE AND AMERICA. DEAF AND DUMB, VITAL STATISTICS OF. The subject of deafness and its consequences has of late received a considerable degree of attention, but assuredly not more than its importance deserves. As one result, there is a somewhat general acquaintance with the fact that deafness prevails widely, but comparatively few, excepting those brought professionally or by relationship into daily contact with individuals so conditioned, form anything like adequate notions of the amount of deprivation under which a totally deaf person labours. Till institutions for the instruction of the deaf and dumb began to multiply, and thus to attract public notice and sympathy towards this unfortunate class of persons, it was believed that the deaf and dumb formed an inconceivably small proportion of the population; but the last census has dissipated this erroneous belief, and shown the public that there are within the limits of these islands 17,300 deaf and dumb persons. [DEAF AND DUMB, CENSUS OF THE.] Perhaps one cause of the general want of knowledge on this subject is the incapability of the deaf and dumb to give utterance to their own deficiencies; the very nature of their deprivation prevents their making it known and obtaining relief: thus generations have lived and died in wretchedness and obscurity. Deafness occurs in every degree, in some cases only amounting to an insensibility to very sharp notes. Many people cannot hear the squeaking of the bat and the mouse. By holding the nose, inflating the ears, and ceasing to breathe, the ear is rendered more open to base notes, and more deaf than it naturally is to sharp notes. Dr. Wollaston constructed a small organ, whose notes began where the sharp notes of ordinary instruments end; the notes of his organ increased in sharpness till they became inaudible, though he was certain that it continued to give sound from feeling the vibrations equally with the lower notes. He thus found that some people could hear seven or eight notes higher | than others, and that children could generally hear two or three notes higher than grown-up people. In some persons the accuracy of the ear is merely impaired in distinguishing faint sounds, and sounds somewhat similar; instances of this kind are particularly evident in infants, whose first attempts at speech are a very remote similarity to the sounds they hear, and become more perfect as their ear is educated, and in some cases remain imperfect through life, in consequence of defect in the organs of hearing. All imperfections of speech do not arise from imperfect hearing: an indistinct articulation may result from various other causes, from carelessness, from defective organs of speech or an imperfect formation of those organs, from irregular respiration producing hesitation, and in some instances proceeding from nervousmess. The principles which regulate utterance have been practically considered and acted upon by many professors who successfully practise the cure of stammering. The discovery of these principles is due to Dr. Arnott, whose work, 'Elements of Physics,' should be consulted by all those persons who wish to ascertain the causes, moral or physical, which tend to produce defective speech. [STAMMERING.] By total deafness is meant that state in which the organs of hearing are as insensible to sound as any other part of the body. To persons in this condition sound is a mere vibration, which can be felt, but very imperfectly distinguished. Yet persons who are generally considered as totally deaf, are not all equally so. There are cases where the firing of a gun is unheard though immediately near the deaf person, and others where a gun fired at a quarter of a mile distant is heard, and distinguished from the falling of a heavy weight upon a boarded floor. In some instances, the human voice in a great variety of its louder single intonations can be recognised, though the loudest reading or the highest pitch of a speaker would make no impression. The late Dr. Itard, of the Imperial Institution for the Deaf and Dumb at Paris, considered that more than half of the pupils received into that institution are of that class who hear the least; about the same proportion would be found in the English institutions. The other half comprise cases more or less of imperfect deafness, an expression which must by no means be confounded with imperfect hearing. Mr. Toynbee, the aural surgeon to the Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb, in Kent Road, London, gives as the result of an examination of 411 children in that asylum, that 245, or three-fifths, were quite deaf, while 166, or twofifths, heard certain sounds. In all these conditions of deafness, the person is consequently mute, or dumb. Hence the expression deaf-mute, as used in the Continental languages, and deaf and dumb, as used in England and America, to designate a person so deaf as to be inaccessible by the ordinary means of lingual communication, and unable to make known his thoughts, wishes, and feelings, in our conventional tongues. As natural articulation can only be acquired by those who hear, it follows that, according to the condition of the power of hearing will be, cæteris paribus, the distinctness of articulated sounds. Hence, in the instruction of deaf-mutes in artificial articulation, it is generally found that those pupils who can in some degree distinguish the different tones of the human voice become the best speakers. There are certainly cases where the articulation of a totally deaf person is pleasanter to hear, softer, and less monotonous, than in some instances of imperfect deafness; but these depend upon other causes, as the natural tone of the voice, the attention of the pupil, or the care of the instructor. When the term deafness is used in this article, it is intended to convey the idea of an absence of hearing power so total as to exclude the reception of sounds producing ordinary vibrations. Persons in this state are shut out from the usual means of converse and communication with the world; they feel concussions, and also vibrations, which are in direct contact with some portion of their body; but they are deaf to the loudest conversations and to all the ordinary means of direct intercourse by the living voice, as well as to the thousand charms which delight the sense of hearing: there are several degrees of this kind of deafness. Difficulty of hearing is another thing, and may be partial or temporary. It is often a concomitant of age, of local disease, or of general functional derangement. In this case the sense is only impaired; in the other it either has not existed or has been destroyed. There is a wide difference between a diminished sense of hearing and a total want of the power. Should the case be one of deafness from birth, it is called congenital; should the power of hearing have been lost from the supervention of some disease in the infancy of life, it may yet be as total as if from birth, but it is then a case of acquired deafness. In either case it is accompanied with dumbness; for those who have never heard sounds cannot imitate them, and those who become deaf before they have heard spoken words are in the same condition,—— dumb. Such children are prevented from exercising that instinctive faculty of imitating sounds and speech, which constitutes one of the main pleasures and one of the most improving exercises of childhood. Again, deafness may come on at a much later period, and utterance thenceforward begins to be thick, guttural, and indistinct, so as to be frequently misunderstood; the deaf person then takes less pleasure in exercising a faculty which he finds so comparatively useless, and he becomes dumb more from choice than from necessity. This, however, is not the invariable result, but depends to some extent on temperament. Thus it was with Dr. Kitto, who gives this account of himself in his little volume The Lost Senses:" Before my fall my enunciation was remarkably clear and distinct; but after that event it was found that I had not only become deaf, but spoke with pain and difficulty, and in a voice so greatly altered as to be not easily understood. I have no present recollection of having ever experienced positive pain in the act of speaking; but I was informed by one who was present, and deeply interested in all which took place at that time, that I complained of pain in speaking; and I am farther told, that my voice had become very similar to that of one born deaf and dumb, but who has |