It remains to be ascertained what proportion this number bears to the whole number carried. There are no reliable statistics on this head any more than on the other. Nothing but an approximation of the most general character is possible. The number of passengers annually carried on the roads of a few of the states is reported with more or less accuracy, and averaging these the result would seem to indicate that there are certainly not more than 350,000,000 passengers annually carried on the roads of all the states. There is something barbarous about such an approximation, and it is disgraceful that at this late day we should in America be forced to estimate the passenger movement on our railroads in much the same way that we guess at the population of Africa. Such, however, is the case. We are in this respect far in the rear of civilized communities. Taking, however, 350,000,000 as a fair approximation to our present annual passenger movement, it will be observed that it is as nearly as may be half that of Great Britain. In Great Britain, in 1878, there were 1,200 injuries to passengers from accidents to trains, and 675 in 1877. The average of the last eight years has been 1,226. If, therefore, the approximation of 800 a year for America is at all near the truth, the percentage would seem to be considerably larger than that arrived at from the statistics of Great Britain. Meanwhile it is to be noted that while in Great Britain about 25 cases of injury are reported to each one of death, in America but four cases are reported to each death--a discrepancy which is extremely suggestive. Perhaps, however, the most valuable conclusion to be drawn from these figures is that in America we as yet are absolutely without any reliable railroad statistics on this subject at all. Taken as a whole, however, and under the most favorable showing, it would seem to be a matter of fair inference that the dangers incident to railroad traveling are materially greater in the United States than in any country of Europe. How much greater is a question wholly impossible to answer. So that when a statistical writer undertakes to show, as one eminent European authority has done, that in a given year on the American roads one passenger in every 286,179 was killed, and one in every 90,737 was injured, it is charitable to suppose that in regard to America only is he indebted to his imagination for his figures.