The French philosopher Montesquieu went so far as to explain the supposed frequency of suicide in London by connecting it with English rains and fogs. It was only natural, he argued, that unhappy people should kill themselves in a country where the autumnal and winter months were so dark, and where there was so much gloomy, depressing weather. When, however, investigators began to study the subject in the light of accurate statistics, when they grouped suicides by months and compared one month with another, they were surprised to find that the tendency to suicide was greatest, not in the gloomy and depressing months of November and December, but in the bright and cheerful month of June. In 1898 Dr. Oscar Geck, of Strasburg, published statistics of about 100,000 suicides that took place in Prussia in the twenty-year period between 1876 and 1896. They showed that, so far at least as Prussia was concerned, suicides invariably attained their maximum in June and their minimum in December. There was a constant rise in the suicide curve from January to the end of June, and a constant decline from June to the end of the first winter month. Durkheim, of Paris, and Dr. Gubski, of St. Petersburg, who are among the most recent investigators of the subject, assert that, so far as the seasonal distribution of suicides is concerned, the figures for Prussia hold good throughout Europe. June is everywhere the suicide month, and December is everywhere the month in which self-destruction is least frequent. Durkheim gives tabulated statistics for seven of the principal countries of Europe, which show conclusively that, in point of predisposing tendency to suicide, the four seasons stand in the following order: summer first, spring second, autumn third, and winter last.[17] Even in Russia, which differs most from the rest of Europe in ethnology and economic status, the seasonal distribution of suicides is the same. Dr. Gubski's statistics show that of every thousand Russian suicides, 328 take place in summer, 272 in spring, 215 in autumn, and 185 in winter. If we divide the year into halves, and group the suicides in semi-annual periods, we find that 600 occur in the pleasant spring and summer months and only 400 in the gloomy months of winter and fall. A study of American statistics brings us to almost exactly the same result. In September, 1895, Dr. Forbes Winslow, of New York, read a paper before the medico-legal congress which was then in session in that city upon the subject of "Suicide as a Mental Epidemic." The statistics which he submitted showed that in the United States, as in Europe, suicide reaches its maximum in June and falls to its minimum in December. The average annual number of American suicides in June is 336 and in December 217. If we divide the year into halves and compare the figures of the semi-annual periods with those of Russia, the correspondence is almost startling.