Catholics. If a numerical inferiority were to operate at the present time in reproducing the tendency to suicide, we should not find it, as we do, much more frequent among the Jews of Bavaria, and especially in Lower Franconia and the Archduchy of Austria, than among the Catholics, although they form hut a small fraction of the population.
With t regard to the influence of religion in this matter, the only one fact which as yet has been well proved is the higher rate of suicides among Protestants than among Catholics, as appears from our tables, in which, along with the average of various states and provinces, we have given the proportions of the inhabitants belonging to the two faiths. A very considerable difference will be found, particularly in countries of mixed creeds, where those in which Protestants predominate are always visited with the greatest number of violent deaths. It needs but to compare the mixed Cantons of Switzerland, the Circles of Prussia, Hanover, and Baden, and the provinces of Holland. And it is observable that, while there certainly are Catholic countries which supply a high average (such as the departments of the Ile de France and the Orleannais), no Protestant country has figures that will bear comparison with the lowest of those of certain Catholic countries of the south of Europe. The influence of Paris is such as altogether to neutralize that of religion; but, for so considerable a rise in the average of the northeast of France, we must take into account the introduction of the Germanic ethnical element, for there the religious apathy which springs from the habits of our times has not yet taken sufficient effect to tell upon statistics.
| A MAP REVIEW. |
By FRANK D. Y. CARPENTER, C. E.
EVERY new scientific book is duly noticed, and every meritorious painting or other work of art receives its critical mention, but we have yet to see, in this country, any review of that combination of science and art—a geographical map. Such a map, worthy in more ways than one of the attention of engineer and artist, has just been completed in the Washington office of the geographical surveys of the United States Engineer Bureau, and as a posthumous publication of these surveys, now discontinued, its appearance may awaken a sense of regret over the end of an organization which was capable of producing such excellent results. It has already won the highest honors at the Geographical Congress of Venice, where the original drawing and a photo-lithographic proof were exhibited in September last.
This sheet was designed by Captain Wheeler, in charge of this work, to illustrate the methods of map-making, peculiarly American
