gency of climate the mental
forces which are normally capable of holding the criminal instincts in
check, lose for a time their accustomed power, and it is whilst this
temporary loss endures that the person subject to it becomes most
liable to be plunged into disaster. It is in this manner, in my
belief, that temperature deleteriously operates upon human conduct.

The results of my investigations do not, however, bear out the
commonly accepted view that crimes against property increase in the
depth of winter. As far as this law relates to crime in France it may
be correct; the statistical inquiries of Guerry, Ferri, and Corre
point to that conclusion. On the other hand, as far as the law relates
to England, I have serious doubts as to its validity. In the county of
Surrey, in the year 1888-89, not only more crimes against the person,
but also more crimes against property were committed in July than in
January. In the former month, as compared with the latter, cases of
felony increased 20 per cent.; and if Surrey is to be taken as a fairly
typical English county--which there is every reason to believe it
is--we have before us the remarkable fact that there are more offences
against property in summer than in winter. The current opinion that
winter is the most criminal period of the year is entirely fallacious,
and it is extremely probable that it is equally fallacious to imagine
that property is less sate when the days are short and the nights
long.

But while property, on the whole, in more safe in winter than in
summer, the offences committed against it in winter are, as a rule, of
a more serious character. This, at least, is the conclusion which I
should be inclined to draw, from the fact that there are more
indictable offences--that is to say, offences not tried by a
magistrate, but by a judge and jury--in the six months between October
and March than in the summer six months. For the year ended September,
1888, which is an average year, there were fully 2000 more indictable
offences in the winter six months than in the summer six months. As a
considerable proportion of indictable offences consist in crimes
against property of the nature of housebreaking and burglary, it is
very probable that these crimes are most prevalent in winter. But if
all kinds of offences against property, petty as well as grave, are
thrown together, and calculated under one head, it comes out that
these offences are most numerous in summer