According to the London Medical Record, an America* physician, Dr.
Farrar, has calculated that about half-a-ton of pure gold is annually packed away into American teeth; and he goes on to assert that, at this rate, within 300 years as much pure gold will have been buried with the teeth into which it is packed as there is now in the whole gold circulation of the earth. Perhaps Dr. Farrar is right, for half-a-ton of gold is only 17,920 ounces avoirdupois; and supposing that one American in a hundred has his teeth stopped with gold, that would give each an average amount of annual stopping of something like one-sixteenth of an ounce, which is not, perhaps, a very extravagant amount. But we are not in- clined to spend wonder on these trite calculations of how much gold all the stuffed teeth of the ages may be eventually supposed to contain, any more than on how many wasted minutes all the useless calculations of the ages may be supposed to have accounted for. You might just as well calculate how many yards of artery there are pulsing away at a Guildhall dinner, or how many multiples of the present Lord Mayor would reach to the moon. It is always easy to astonish people by manipu- lating the insignificant facts of life with the aid of the multipli- cation table,—but the astonishment is barren, not to say a little imbecile.
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