The Transactions of the Royal Society contain the first Life Table. It was constructed by Halley, who discovered its remarkable properties, and illustrated some of its applications. The Breslau observations did not supply Halley with the data to frame an accurate table, for reasons which will be immediately apparent; but the conception is full of ingenuity, and the form is one of the great inventions which adorn the annals of the Royal Society.

The operation of the clearing has the effect of enabling all the payments from one bank to another to be performed without the passing of bank-notes; and the result is, that if any bank has to receive from the clearing, say, £50,000, the account of that bank at the Bank of England is better by £50,000 at 9 o'clock the next morning; and if a bank has to pay into the clearing £50,000, the amount of that bank is worse by £50,000.

As regards the hereditary transmission of phthisis, another investigation of the statistics of the Hospital for Consumption at Brompton showed, that where one parent only was affected with pulmonary disease, the fathers being so affected transmitted the disease to their sons in 63 out of 106 cases, being 59·4 per cent. of the whole number observed; and to their daughters in 47 cases only out of 108, being 43½ per cent.: while the mothers being phthisical transmitted the disease to their sons in 43 cases, being 40·6 per cent.; and to their daughters in 61 cases, being 56½ per cent. of the cases under observation. Judging, therefore, from these figures, it would probably appear, if a large number of cases were registered, that the power of transmission of disease by phthisical fathers to their sons, and by phthisical mothers to their daughters, is about the same.

It is not an uncommon occurrence with certain classes of professional men who have settled themselves in this country, and perhaps assured their lives, without any intention of leaving it, to be called to a position which takes them to a residence permanently, or at least for a lengthened period, abroad. The principle on which an Office should increase their payments for assurance forms both a speculative and practical problem of some interest.

In the year 1832 there was published, in my name, an extensive collection of Life Tables, founded upon the discovery of the law which, in my belief, governs the mortality, according to age, of all nations and classes of men, from the earliest infancy to extreme old age. In these tables the numbers living or surviving at successive ages have been deduced from a simple formula expressing the proportion of survivors at any age in terms of the mortality. They are the first Tables of this kind ever published, and they have been used daily in the practice of life assurance, and in the valuation of life contingencies, for a period of thirty-two years, including four years before publication.