In Paris there is 1 physician to 1,300 inhabitants; 1 surgeon to 6,000 inhabitants; 1 apothecary to 4,450 inhabitants.

Being in the proportion of 1 physician in Paris to 5 in London; 5 surgeons in London to 1 in Paris; 7 apothecaries in London to 1 in Paris.

Supposing, on an average, each of these persons to receive 1,000_l._ a year, the whole income of the medical profession in London would be 3,474,000_l._ annually.

Poor Rates.

About the close of the seventeenth century, the poors’ rates of England and Wales were stated, on the authority of parliamentary documents, to amount to 665,362_l._; and the population of both to 5,475,000.  In 1821, the poors’ rates amounted to about 7,000,000_l._, and the population to 12,218,000.  Dividing the greater rates 7,000,000_l._ by the lesser 665,362_l._, we have about 10-1/2 to 1, which is the proportion in which the poors’ rates have increased in the last 127 years.  And dividing the greater population 12,218,000 by the lesser 5,475,000, give about 2-1/2 to 1, which is the proportionate increase of population during that space of time.

Van Dieman’s Land Wasp.

The wasp of Van Dieman’s Land is a smaller but much more splendid insect than the English wasp; it has four orange-coloured wings, and horns and legs of the same colour, a hard body, and a formidable sting.  It is an inhabitant of the forest, and is at war with a spider that makes its hole in the sandy places, and which is armed with a cap or door, which it pulls over on the approach of its enemy, or in rainy weather.  The wasp hovers close over the ground, prowling from one hole to another.  Having seized its prey, it immediately kills the spider, and carries it off to its own hole, when it is said to devour the limbs, and to deposit its egg in the body to be hatched by the putrefaction that ensues, and which furnishes food for the young insect produced.

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THE SKETCH-BOOK.

No.  XLVIII.

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HIGHLAND SUPERSTITION.

There is an extraordinary superstition connected with the M’Alister family.  Ages ago,—­for I have never yet got a date from a Highlander as to the transactions of long past times,—­but many generations back, in the days of a chief of great renown in the clan, called M’Alister More, either from his deeds or his stature, there was a skirmish with a neighbouring clan that ended fatally for the M’Alisters, though in the contest at the time they were victorious.