st conspicuous, and it may therefore be concluded that the
increase of prison offences in summer is attributable to the greater
heat.

Seeing, then, that temperature produces these effects inside prison
walls, it is only reasonable to infer that it produces similar effects
on the outside world. The larger number of offences against prison
discipline which take place in the hot weather have their counterpart
in the larger number of offences committed against the criminal law
during the same season of the year. The conclusions arrived at with
respect to the action of season are supported by the conclusions
already reached with respect to the action of climate. In fact, both
sets of conclusions support each other; both of them point to the
operation of the same cause.

To any one who may still feel reluctant to admit the intimate relation
between cosmical conditions and crime I would point out that
suicide--a somewhat similar disorder in the social organism--likewise
increases and diminishes under the influences of temperature. "We
cannot help acknowledging," says Dr. Morselli, in his work on
"Suicide," "that through the whole of Europe the greater number of
suicides happen in the two warm seasons. This regularity in the annual
distribution of suicide is too great to be attributed to chance or to
the human will. As the number of violent deaths can be predicted from
year to year with extreme probability in any particular country, so
can the average of every season also be foreseen; in fact, these
averages are so constant from one period to another as to have almost
the specific character of a given statistical series." Professor von
Oettingen in his valuable work, "Die Moralstatistik," comes to the
very same conclusions as Morselli, although his point of view is
entirely different. After mentioning several of the principal States
of Europe, the statistics of which he had examined, Von Oettingen goes
on to say that it may be accepted as a general law that the prevalence
of suicide in the different months of the year rises and falls with
the sun--in June and July it is most rampant; in November, December
and January it descends to a minimum. In London there are many more
suicides in the sunny month of June than in the gloomy month of
November, and throughout the whole of England the cold months do not
demand nearly so many victims as the hot. In the face of these
indisputable facts Von Oettingen, while rejecting the idea th