An article under this heading, “contributed” to The Scotsman of 8 December, 1897, draws attention to the existence of “crazy” areas in Scotland.

We have received a circular from Professor Bechterew stating that the clinique for mental maladies in the Imperial Military Academy of Medicine at St. Petersburg has now been opened for thirty years, and that a new separate building for nervous diseases will be inaugurated forthwith. It is proposed by the physicians in charge to create two museums, psychological and neurological, to commemorate this event. They ask for contributions of plans, reports, publications, photographs, etc., relative to asylums and their inmates, and for pathological specimens, preparations, apparatus relative to nervous diseases. Those willing to aid are instructed to address packages to “Russie, St. Petersbourg, Clinique des Maladies Mentales et Nerveuses, Rue Samarskaya No. 9. The carriage will be paid by the recipients. Our Library Committee might take a hint and negotiate a fair exchange.

The installation of the electric light at the Aberdeen Asylum, at the time particulars were asked, was in an incomplete state, and is still so far from being finished that we cannot give definite information either as to the first cost or as to the cost of maintenance. The light has been in use in the Hospital buildings for over a year, and has recently been introduced into Elmhill House, there being in all about 700 lamps in use. It is not yet introduced into the Asylum main buildings, but will be as soon as the proposed reconstruction and alterations are completed, which, however, will not be for some years. When all is finished it is estimated that there will be from 1,500 to 1,600 lamps in use.

Referring to Dr. Jones's paper in the last number of this Journal, Mr. Townsend writes: —

Electric Lighting Engines.—Statistics taken during the last five years show (as pointed out by Dr. Jones, p. 761) that high-speed engines coupled direct to dynamos and with improved multitubular boilers, are coming into favour, and prove that their cost of generating current is nearly 10 per cent. lower than with slow-speed engines and belt-driven dynamos—especially when the engines and dynamos are of 50 horse-power and upwards.

Mr. Richard Adams, L.R.C.P.Edin., M.R.C.S.Eng., Medical Superintendent of the Cornwall County Asylum, at Bodmin, on his retirement from that office, which he had held over forty years, was presented with a valuable silver coffee tray as a testimonial of esteem, subscribed for by 157 of the officials, past and present.