The Railway statistics of last year show very remarkably the
extraordinary safety of railway travelling. The total number of travellers (excluding the season-ticket travellers) was no less than 538,281,295; and of these, one in every group of 3,872,570 was killed, and one in every group of 286,867, injured,—that is, the chance of being killed in any single journey is about as great as the chance of drawing the prize in a lottery with over three million tickets and all but one of them blanks ; while the chance of being wounded is equal to the chance of drawing a prize in a lottery containing 285,867 tickets, and all but one of them blanks. No one, we suppose, would sacrifice anything he really valued for either chance, and yet the superstitious expectation of luck is always a much more effective force in the mind than the supersti- tious expectation of unlunk.
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