ter half of the year (from the beginning of October to the end
of March), when outdoor life has lost its attractions, and much
time must be spent in the house, is naturally the season for
reading. But during the two central months of winter, December
and January, the attraction of reading meets with a powerful
counter-attraction in the excitement produced by the approach of
Christmas, and the increased activity of social life which
accompanies and for several weeks follows Christmas. In this way
the other four winter months--October and November at the
autumnal end, and February and March at the spring end--must
inevitably present the two chief reading climaxes of the year;
and so the reports of lending libraries present us with figures
which show a striking, but fallacious, resemblance to the curves
which are probably produced by more organic causes.

I am far from wishing to deny that the impulse which draws young
men and women to imaginative literature is unconnected with the
obscure promptings of the sexual instinct. But, until the
disturbing influence I have just pointed out is eliminated, I see
no evidence here for any true seasonal periodicity. Possibly in
prisons--the value of which, as laboratories of experimental
psychology we have scarcely yet begun to realize--more reliable
evidence might be obtained; and those French and other prisons
where novels are freely allowed to the prisoners might yield
evidence as regards the consumption of fiction as instructive as
that yielded at Clermont concerning the consumption of bread.

Certain diseases show a very regular annual curve. This is notably the
case with scarlet fever. Caiger found in a London fever hospital a marked
seasonal prevalence: there was a minor climax in May (repeated in July),
and a great autumnal climax in October, falling to a minimum in December
and January. This curve corresponds closely to that usually observed in
London.[170] It is not peculiar to London, or to urban districts, for in
rural districts we find nearly the same spring minor maximum and major
autumnal maximum. In Russia it is precisely the same. Many other epidemic
diseases show very similar curves.

An annual curve may be found in the expulsive force of the bladder as
measured by the distance to which the urinary stream can be projected.
This curve, as ascertained for one case, is inte