money and goods have been sent out to Drs Barth and Overweg, in
Central Africa, to enable them to pursue their discoveries; and the
British resident at Zanzibar has been instructed to assist them. We
may thus hope, before long, to add to our knowledge both of the torrid
and frigid zones.

To touch upon a home topic: we are told that government are rather
afraid of their own bill for intermural interments passed last
session, which may account for none of its provisions having yet been
carried out. The project now is to supersede that bill by another,
which is to extend the practice of cemetery interment. This looks like
a want of faith in sanitary principles. On the other hand, the sale of
the lazaretto at Marseilles, with a view to construct docks on its
site, is a proof that the French government can do something in the
way of sanitary reform. It is, in fact, quite time that the
superstitious notions about infection, and the vexations of
quarantine, should give place to sounder views and more rational
methods. Meantime, as meteorologists say, we are coming to the cycle
of hot summers, it behoves us more than ever to bury the dead far from
towns. The Registrar-General tells us that, on the whole, we are
improving, and it is not less an individual than a national duty to
forward the improvement. According to the return just published for
the quarter ending December last, the births in 1851 amounted to
616,251, the largest number ever registered, being an excess of 5 per
cent. over former returns. The deaths were 385,933, leaving a surplus
which increases the population of England and Wales to more than
18,000,000. In the same quarter, 59,200 emigrants, chiefly Irish, left
the kingdom. With respect to marriages, which also exceed in number
those of former years, the Registrar repeats what he has often said
before, that marriages increase 'when the substantial earnings of the