Insanity 5 Bleaching Nuts 7 Unknown 1,323 Among the more common causes of fire (such as gas, candle, curtains taking fire, children playing with fire, stoves, &c.), it is remarkable how uniformly the same numbers occur under each head from year to year. General laws obtain as much in small as in great events. We are informed by the Post-Office authorities that about eight persons daily drop their letters into the post without directing them–we know that there is an unvarying percentage of broken heads and limbs received into the hospitals–and here we see that a regular number of houses take fire, year by year, from the leaping out of a spark, or the dropping of a smouldering pipe of tobacco. It may indeed be a long time before another conflagration will arise from "a monkey upsetting a clotheshorse," but we have no doubt such an accident will recur in its appointed cycle. Although gas figures so largely as a cause of fire, it does not appear that its rapid introduction of late years into private houses has been attended with danger. There is another kind of light, however, which the insurance offices look upon with terror, especially those who make it their business to insure farm property. The assistant secretary of one of the largest fire-offices, speaking broadly, informed us that the introduction of the lucifer match _caused them an annual loss of ten thousand pounds!_ In the foregoing list we see in how many ways they have given rise to fires. Lucifers going off probably from heat 80 Children playing with lucifers 45 Rat gnawing lucifers 1 Jackdaw playing with lucifers 1 --- 127