told amount of sickness, besides the incalculable pecuniary as well as moral benefits which would necessarily flow therefrom. Who with competency and courage, will take the lead and who will lend a helping hand?*

This remark applies to the immediately preceding tabular statement. It does not hold true of isolated cities, especially in our own State, as will be seen by the tabled statement on page 46. In Massachusetts, the city whose records show the greatest increase in the death-rate is Springfield. With an average annual rate of 17 in 1,000 living, during the five years 1853-57, it increased to nearly 22 in 1,000 in 1858, and 25 in each 1,000 living in 1859. What causes have contributed to such a melancholy result is well worthy of serious investigation and should arrest the attention of the government of that city.

Seasons of the Year.-The tabulation on the next page will exhibit the annual rates of death in the several quarters of the years specified :

The able writer of the English Registration Reports says: "The greater part of the evils from which the people are now suffering is the result of ignorance, which can only be dispersed by the diffusion of sanitary knowledge through its natural channels, the medical practitioners, the public writers [and lecturers] the lawyers, the clergy, &c." .

"If the population of London at each respective period of age had experienced a mortality at the same rate as the population of 63 comparatively healthy districts in England, the deaths in London in 1858 would have been about 45,988; they actually amounted to 64,093, and consequently 18,105 unnatural deaths may be referred to causes which the Metropolitan Boards of Works have to investigate, and endeavor to remove or greatly mitigate. It is an important mission which the country expects them to fulfil.

As a preliminary condition of the improvements which may be expected to flow from the cultivation of sanitary science, three things are indispensable: pure air for the people to breathe, pure water, and a healthy soil to live on."

"A beginning of a movement has been made in the right direction under Sir Benjamin Hall's Act. Medical Health Officers are appointed in all the London districts, and many of them are working courageously in the midst of unhealthy places, and against ignorant opposition, with success. Their reports are replete with interesting facts, and contain many words in season of sanitary truth, well calculated to influence and direct the Boards. They have deserved the public approbation; for they have done quietly a great deal of good work, and it is probable have saved many lives, and prevented much sickness."-XXIst Eng. Reg. Rep. 1858, pp. xxv. and xli—xlii.

The most prominent feature presented in the foregoing is the obvious fact that while the summer season is the more mortal in Massachusetts, it is the more healthy in England and Scotland. The three months of July, August, and September, are invariably more fatal in this State, whether we consider any single year, or a period of years, but the same three months invariably present the lowest rates of death in the countries on the other side of the Atlantic, whose rates are given for comparison.

In this country the large mortality in summer is, in part, owing to the greater number of deaths among the young during the hot weather. We have not the quarterly reports of England, and consequently cannot contrast the two places in this particular, which would be a point of interest as well as instruction.

Ages at Death.-No comparisons of mortality between two places, or in the same place at different periods of time, can be satisfactorily complete without a knowledge of the ages of such as die, and the ages of the living among whom the deaths occur. It is to be hoped that the analysis of the United States census for Massachusetts, in its several counties, cities, and towns, will be completed in season for interesting deductions in this particular, before another Annual Report is to be published. With a correct distribution of the population by ages, and complete records of births and deaths, especially the latter, trustworthy Life Tables may be computed for each sex, in each county, city, and town in the State; and such tables properly constructed, would be of the highest value in solving some of the most important problems relating to political, productive, financial and sanitary economics.

In our last Report some attention was given to the fallacy of uses which have been made of the average or mean age at death. Since those sentences were written, an able and profound foreign writer has given publicity to very valuable suggestions relating to statistical inquiry, from which we extract the following:-" In the science of vital statistics, the average age at death is erroneously confused with the mean duration of life. Now, these two statistical elements are by no means identical. They are only so under certain conditions of a population which practically never exist. I know of no population in which the mean age at death is the same as the mean duration of life. The difference is often very great, and the error from the misuse of these names has crept

into many scientific papers. I will mention one. A year or two ago, a paper was published in the transactions of a philosophical society of considerable repute, in which, among other errors, the mean age at death of a limited population living in the country, was compared with the mean age at death of a population of the same class (the Society of Friends) living in towns [cities]. The author assumed that these numbers expressed the duration of life in country and town, and found a wonderful shortening in the lifetime of the latter. Here was an evidence of the insalubrity of town residence, even when combined with all the paliating circumstances of middle-class comfort. But the whole train of reasoning was rotten. The class, whose deaths were collected, have been for many years sending off their young people to the towns, where the said young people marry and have families; while those remaining in the country consist largely of the non-marrying and the old. No wonder the average age at death of the town residents falls many years below that of residents in the country."*

Many similar mistakes made by writers in this country might be adduced, where different communities, or persons classed as pursuing different occupations, have been compared by the false standard of the average or mean age at death.

Nativity of Persons who Died.-For several years it has been usual to give a tabular statement which exhibits the numbers of deaths, distinguishing their nativity. The abstract from the records of 1859 follows.

On the Province of the Statistician by J. J. Fox-A Paper read before the British Association at Oxford, July 2, 1860.

Whole Number,

Fem.