Genre:

Regular Feature, Reportage, Drollery

Subjects:

Race, Animal Behaviour, Cultural Geography, Astrology, Mental Illness, Government, Politics, Lecturing, Education

    Reports on Robert Peel's criticism of the Irish politician Daniel O'Donaghue for his attack on Queen Victoria. Notes that 'the species' of which O'Donaghue 'is a type cannot speak, as is well known to the negroes and other naturalists, but can fight', but considers the Irish politician's later 'sensible' remarks to suggest that he will one day improve himself, 'as Mr. Darwin might say, into positive Rationality'. Later, in an allusion to astrologers Richard J Morrison and Robert C Smith and millenarian divine John Cumming, reports that one of 'Mr. Zadkiel-Uriel-Raphael-Cumming Punch's Prophecies' has been fulfilled, namely the introduction of a 'Bill for Amending the Law of Lunacy', a measure following the case of William F Windham. The bill includes the clause that 'The doctors are not to be sent for, except when other evidence as to facts cannot be had, and then they are to swear as to what they know, instead of delivering highly improving and scientific lectures on the theory of insanity'. (92)