seek to barter in the same way.

From time to time new disclosures of the most fearful nature came to light, showing the extent to which this crime prevailed among the Khonds and others; while the worshippers. of Boora Penu, a sect of the Khonds, alleged his permissive sanction for the custom, given on the last occasion of his communication with mankind, when he said to men:-"Behold! from making one female what I and the world have suffered. You are at liberty to bring up only as many women as you can manage." According to the law of births the number of each sex is nearly equal; but at one time it was found among the population of Kattywar, a central division of Goojerat, though exceeding eight thousand, not more than sixty-three female children had been preserved in the course of ten years. On some of the largest estates only one, and on others, containing more than four hundred families, not one female child was found.

Conversion of Pagans.

A RECKONING-UP OF THE GREAT MISSIONARY BALANCE SHEET.

THE year is drawing to a close, and it is time for us to cast up the balance sheet, and see how it stands with the great business of the pagan world's conversion. Let us, therefore, examine the statistics given on another page, for they will show us the state of Christianity in a large part of the globe. The whole population of the countries there given is 745,351,988, and out of this vast mass only 2,440,481 are marked as Catholics; in other words, paganism in these countries alone has now in its favor a balance of some 741,000,000 of souls. We should doubtless have liked to have seen a different result. But do we fully realize what these figures mean?

The first question they suggest is - How will Christianity ever overtake heathenism? Facts and figures show us that Mohammedism, Hinduism, and Buddhism are nct dying out of themselves. Nor will secular education effect their dissolution. It may induce a gradual dissociation. It may force the various heathen creeds to cast away their distinctive features, and unite in one common system of atheism, hardened by a self-imagined enlightenment. But the Church alone can Christianize. She must press forward in her missionary campaign. Press forward, indeed! For will heathendom ever be converted, if missionary activity continues as it is now?

Reckoning only from the days of St. Francis Xavier, we have more than three hundred years, and only two and a half millions of souls to be numbered now. At this rate we can never hope to overtake paganism. Think only of the increase of births over deaths! The carefullytaken census of 1881 shows that the growth for India is fully one per cent., or that the population doubles itself in one hundred years; elsewhere the rate is probably greater, but let us take it as the same.

Then, in one hundred years, our 741,500,000 of pagans will have become 1,483,000,000. Christians, it is true, multiply more rapidly. Let us, therefore, put the increase for them at two per cent. (that for England); then, in one hundred years, the two and a half million Catholics will be ten millions. In other words, heathenism will have outgrown Christianity by 1,473,000,000. Will the church, then, have failed in her mission? Surely not. She was bidden to go to the uttermost parts of the world, and to preach to all nations. This she has done and will ever do. But was she not intended to convert all nations? Yes, indeed, this was God's intention; but beyond the limits required by the church's apostolicity and Catholicity, He had made her success dependent on the free will of the pagans and on the co-operation of the faithful.

Now, how are the faithful doing? What, for instance, are the Catholics of the United Kingdom doing towards the diffusion of Christ's gospel? The annual income of the United Kingdom's population is estimated at £1,000,000,000, and its numbers at 37,000,000. Oneseventh of these, or about five millions, are Catholics, and their yearly income may therefore be reckoned at £143,000,000, say at least £100,000,000. We will not ask what a community with one hundred millions a year at its disposal has done, but only what it ought to be doing now.

We cannot say all this revenue is required for the expenses of life. It is calculated that nearly one-fourth of their entire income is annually saved by all classes £25,000,000 then yearly laid up by Catholics. Might not half a million a year be spared for the greatest work in the world, the work most pleasing to God, and the most profitable to ourselves, our families, and our country? You, readers, perhaps contribute more than your share; and you have asked others to aid, but they would not. Try again — try at least, to spread our Magazine, for it may come into the hands of others able and willing to aid; moreover, if all the Catholics of only these islands were to become subscribers, how great would be the sum that we could annually give for the propagation of the faith.

Catholic Missions for December.

WHEN we are ill in body we must exact of our minds only acts of submission and acceptance of labor, and acts uniting our will with the good pleasure of God, which acts are formed in the superior part of the soul. As to exterior actions, we must perform them as best we can, even though it be languidly, heavily, and against our inclinations; and to make them acceptable to Divine Love, we must acknowledge, accept, and cherish the holy abjection of our state. In this way you will change the lead of your languor into gold, and that, too, finer gold than your heart could offer in its brightest and happiest moments. - St. Francis de Sales.

The Celtic Element in America.

THE relative numbers of Celtic inhabitants in the four principal cities of the Union must be a matter of interest to every Irish nationalist. To find out such a matter with absolute certainty would be well nigh impossible; but by means of the directories of the cities, about the Celtic population of which we desire to speak, a very close approximation can be made as to the Irish element they contain. We had recently an opportunity of examining the directories of the four principal American cities - New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Boston — and took the trouble to count the number of columns in each directory that contained the most common and numerous Irish names, and the results are very interesting. It will invariably be found that wherever there are the most Os and Macs and the most Murphys and Sullivans there is the largest Irish population; for the names Murphy and Sullivan, and names which begin with O and Mac, are the most numerous among the Celtic race. The prefix O should, by right, be retained before the names Sullivan and Murphy, but in most cases it has been discarded.

The number of names in the columns of the directories of the four cities mentioned is very nearly the same, and will average about 80. The following table gives the number of columns of Os and Macs, Sullivans and Murphys in the four cities mentioned:

From the foregoing it will be seen, contrary to the general belief, that Philadelphia is absolutely, and that Boston is relatively, the most Celtic of American cities. The population of New York is, in round numbers, 1,300,000; Philadelphia, 900,000; Chicago, 700,000, and Boston, 400,000. Philadelphia, about one-third less in population than New York, has fifteen more columns of Celtic names: but Boston, in proportion to its population, is the most Celtic of all. If New York were as Celtic as Boston its directory would have about 550 columns of Os, Macs, Sullivans, and Murphys, instead of 204; and if it were as proportionately Celtic as Philadelphia, its directory would contain about 300 instead of 204 columns of the Celtic names mentioned. Chicago is relatively and absolutely the least Celtic of the four cities. It is about

once and a half as populous as Boston, but its directory contains only 112 columns of the prominent Celtic names against 152 in the Boston directory. We use the term Celtic instead of Irish because a considerable minority of the names beginning with Mac are Scotch rather than Irish. Boston, then, is in proportion to its population the most Celtic and the most Irish city in America.

The case of Philadelphia is curious. It is said to contain a smaller foreign-born population than any of the great cities of America, and this is probably so; yet, with the exception of Boston, it is relatively the most Celtic of the four cities. This is explained by the fact that long ago, as far back as the time when what are now known as the United States were British colonies, there was a vast tide of emigration from Ireland to this country, and the greater part of it was directed to Pennsylvania. The difference between the Irish element in Boston and Philadelphia is that in the former city it is new and in the latter it is

old.

The Citizen, Chicago, Ill.

The Australian Frozen Meat Trade.

In a letter written last month, the Melbourne correspondent of a Scotch paper gives some interesting data regarding the frozen meat trade of that city. He says that though the frozen meat companies have not been very successful, the Melbourne one having been wound up some months ago, yet since the works passed into other hands there is promise of success. Instead of purchasing sheep, as did the original company, the present owners of the works only kill, freeze, and ship the sheep for private owners at specific rates, the owners themselves taking all risks of sales in London. This new system, which has for some time been in vogue in New Zealand, came into operation in Melbourne last April, and up to the despatch of the correspondent's letter, as many as 50,000 sheep had been frozen at the works at Williamstown.

The graziers who consigned on their own account to London agents were pleased with the returns, as they found, after paying all expenses of freezing, freight, and commission, they had got more per head for their sheep than the prices realized for similar animals sold alive in the Melbourne market. Such shippers actually realized from 15s. to 175. 6d. per frozen sheep, when the market rates in Melbourne for live sheep were only 12s. a head. But even had they realized only 12s. for the frozen carcass, they would continue to take all the trouble and risk of sending the meat to London, because one of the main objects of doing so is to reduce the surplus stock in Australia, which without an outside market to resort to, becomes a glut in the colony, and probably without such outlet sheep would have to be sold for 5s. or less per head, or be got quit of by being boiled down for tallow.

FATHER WOOD, an English monk at Rome, constructed the first piano-forte, in 1711.

Saint Patrick's Fire.

"THEY took away our books, but left us the ruins," said an Irishman the other day, speaking of the sources of Irish national inspiration. The same may be said, in a sense no less true, of the sources of religious inspiration in Ireland. Desecrated churches, ruined shrines, monasteries crumbled and ivy-grown, and a system of customs and usages peculiar to Ireland, were the books which spoke to the Celt of his ancient faith in the trial that robbed him of everything else. Of these no power could deprive him, and he has kept and cherished them as sacred relics of the past. Not the least striking of these ancient relics is the bonfire celebration of St. John's eve, as it is called.

Some years ago I happened to be present at this festivity, and shall not soon lose the pleasant impressions it left me. It was in Glen Enny in Southwestern Donegal. The Glen is closed in by a great horse shoe of rugged mountains, which runs around and shelters it on the north, east, and south. A mountain torrent, tumbling over a rocky cliff at the upper end of the Glen, winds down among the hills, and gradually swells into the river Enny, known for its trout and salmon. The cataract bears the name of the Grey Mare's Tail. Neat little thatched cottages, half concealed in clusters of hawthorn, set off the river's banks, and nestle themselves in the green hill-sides. The clansmen of Tyrconnell have held these venerated homesteads for long ages past. Here they still speak the "rushing Celtic tongue," and cherish the old faith. as warmly as when they first received it from the lips of St. Patrick and St. Columba. They despise alike innovations, either in manners or in dress. The men still appear in knee-breeches and swallow-tailed coats, and the women dress in home-spun gowns and snow-white linen caps.

It was on this spot, and among these people, that I enjoyed for the first time the bonfire of St. John's eve. The Irish lads look forward to this as to a great event. For weeks before they had been busy, getting together whatever might swell the blaze or add to the merriment of the occasion. What did they not have? Peat and fir and heath and furze and bramble and fire-wood of every sort. As the eve itself approached all other occupation was stopped. The boys got together in great numbers and worked like "beavers." A circular wall of peat was first built. The space within, as the wall rose, was stuffed with heath and tarred wood, until it formed a dome, some ten feet in diameter, and six or seven feet high. Besides this, great heaps of bramble and furze were kept at a distance to feed the flame, as the night went on. Meanwhile the old men had been at work too. They had prepared torches for the blessing of the crops, and the spreading of the fire among the cornfields. And now they came forth with bundles of long fir and pine splinters, and placed them near the fire in readiness, At length, when all was done and everything was prepared, after the fire and torches had been sprinkled with holy water, as soon as the sun went down, at a given signal the match was applied to the great pile and the flames leaped up to meet the twilight