Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/678

658 cause of factors considered in this study, they themselves could fail to show upon the tables.

—This figure (Fig. 5) indicates in a very decisive manner that states of lower relative humidity, as shown by both maximum and minimum readings, are conducive to excesses in both the



classes of crimes studied. For instance, for maximum humidities between ten and twenty the proportion of actual crime to that expected is 1: 0.1; between twenty and thirty (suicide), 11: 1; between thirty and forty, 9.5: 4.5; between forty and fifty, 15: 8. The maximum curves show somewhat the same general relation though not with quite so marked divergences. To one who has experienced the general low humidities of our Colorado altitudes



(Denver is one mile above the sea level) this result is not surprising. There is no doubt that a nervous tension much in excess of that common in the lower altitudes exists, due in part, perhaps, to the deficiency in barometric pressure and a consequent effect upon the