I propose in this paper to deal with a question which has an important bearing upon those calculations as to deathrates, which are now so widely circulated and so generally felt to possess interest.

It has occurred to the Registrar-General, and, as I believe, to other inquirers, to remark that the mortality happening in London is diminished, “because domestic servants, shopwomen and milliners, “who have come from the country, retire when health fails them “to their native air.”

The various Pension Funds which have been established in the Presidencies of India in the Military, Medical, and Civil Services of the late Honourable East India Company have afforded the means of bringing together a great variety of interesting facts relating to the rates of mortality and marriage amongst Europeans in India. They were originally founded as mutual charitable schemes, giving assistance or pensions to the widows or children of such Members of the services as had not left sufficient pecuniary means for the support of their families or for putting them forward in life. The Company saw fit to encourage these laudable designs by allowing high rates of interest on their invested Funds, and making favourable arrangements in the exchanges for payments to be made in England.

While life insurance premiums, irrespective of the additions for the cost of management, are so calculated, that assuming a given mortality table and a given rate of interest, the receipts of the Insurance Office improved at compound interest will exactly suffice to pay the claims that occur according to the table of mortality; yet the Office suffers a loss in those cases where death occurs soon, and on the contrary makes a profit in the case of the persons who live long. In the grant of life annuities, the contrary is the case. It can be calculated exactly how long an insured person must live in order that the Office may make neither profit nor loss on his insurance; and in the same way it can be calculated what gain or loss the Office experiences when the life assured dies after a given number of years, n. If all these gains and losses are added together, the losses being considered as negative gains, the sum must be = 0. This, however, is far from being the case in practice. The datums of the mortality table, altho' they may be deduced from observations extending over a long series of years, are to be considered as mean values, which are strictly applicable only when there is a very great number of deaths; and we ought to expect that with a small number of insurances, and still more in single instances, considerable deviations from the mean will take place.