Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/877

Rh lost £231,380 on the guaranteed lines, while the shareholders pocketed a handsome profit in interest and surplus; and the state was saved from absolute loss only by the excessive profits it made out of a single one of its own lines. The system thus leads to the habit of regarding all the railways as one great property, and of seeking to make up for the losses that may be incurred on one set of lines by the more than legitimate profits which there may be opportunity to make on another set. The Government has thus become accustomed to the idea of maintaining its military and administrative lines at the expense of the commercial ones. The latter lines need enlargement to accommodate their increasing business, and would amply pay for it, but the state needs the money they furnish it, and which ought to be applied in that way, for the maintenance of its unproductive lines, and has adopted a penurious policy toward its productive ones. Whenever a complaint is made, or a proposition having in view a more liberal policy is agitated, a half-dozen boards and sets of officers in India and England "straightway begin to play an elaborate and interminable game of battle door and shuttlecock with the public interests. Any suggestion that is offered is minuted upon, referred, transferred, and generally knocked about, till the authors of it are ready to abandon it in despair." When called upon to interfere, the Government "is always, perhaps unconsciously, influenced by the thought that, if it sanctions increase of expenditure or reduction of rates, it may diminish its share of surplus profits. Hence the unwise parsimony which leaves main lines insufficiently supplied with rolling-stock to meet any sudden expansion of traffic." Our civil war was over before the Peninsular Railway was supplied with engines and cars enough to take away the cotton which choked all of its stations. The stations are glutted with wheat awaiting transportation to such an extent that the peasant dreads a good crop for fear that it will add to the quantity he must lose, because it takes on the average about five years to get the facilities that are needed on the instant. The Government hesitates when it should act, because it grudges an expenditure of capital, which, while it is comparatively insignificant and sure to bring ultimately a large return, means for the present a temporary reduction of profits on a lot of railroads, the most of which are losing ones.

Influence of Occupation on Physical Deyelopment.—The data obtained by the Anthropometric Committee of the British Association reveal some curious facts respecting the influence of occupation upon physical development. As a rule, the inhabitants of the country are taller and heavier than those of the large towns; but London is an exception, and seems to exert an attraction that draws in the more vigorous part of the country population. The metropolitan police, as a rule, are nearly as tall as the laborers of Galloway—the tallest of Britons—and twelve pounds heavier. The members of the Fire Brigade, who need not be so solid, but are expected to be active, are two and a half inches shorter and twenty-five pounds lighter than the policemen. Athletes average five feet eight and one third inches in height, and only about one hundred and forty-three pounds in weight; from which it is inferred that the majority of the population carry from ten to twenty pounds weight which they would not carry if they were in the highest physical condition. The Fellows of the Royal Society—a class of prominent intellectual gifts—are among the tallest of the race, averaging five feet nine inches and three quarters. The criminal class are forty-five pounds lighter than the police and four inches and a half shorter; and they are eighteen pounds lighter and two inches shorter than the average of the population. Lunatics are about as short as the criminals, but heavier. In men of the same occupation belonging to different races, the influence of race appears to be predominant over that of occupation.

Climbing the Himalayas.—Mr. Graham, an Englishman, with the help of two Swiss mountain-guides, has recently made an attempt to ascend some of the lofty peaks of the Himalayas. Starting from Nynee Tal, he found his first difficulty, and not an insignificant one, to be to get to the mountains. They stand far back, and are