No life has been written of the original projector of the Equitable Society, except in a column of the Biographie Universelle by M. Nicollet. Dodson's name was, and even still is, so familiar to the actuary, chiefly through the Mathematical Repository, and the impulse he gave to life-contingency problems, that this Journal is the proper place of deposit for what can be collected concerning him. The article above mentioned tells very little. He succeeded Hodgson [which should have been Robertson] in the chair of mathematics at Christchurch Hospital in 1756 [1755] and died November 23, 1757. He published the Antilogarithmic Canon, which others had contemplated [and executed too, but the manuscript was lost] and which he had the courage to execute up to a certain point [his table is the counterpart of Vlacq's largest direct table: five figures of argument and eleven of tabular result]. He could not balance the success of the ordinary tables: the writer doubts whether the table was ever used on the continent [he might have added, England: who uses either Vlacq or Dodson? Their tables are for help to other table-makers, and always were, though both of them intended more]. He published, the Calculator in 1747, a collection of tables at the end of which [say in the proper place in the middle] is an abridgment of the antilogarithmic table. But he is best known in England by his Mathematical Repository, and by his zeal for benevolent institutions [say his determination to found an assurance office to which himself should be admissible].

The application of bonus to the hastening of the time fixed by the original contract for the payment of a life assurance policy, and the using of it to extinguish the premiums payable during the latter years of life, are systems, which, partly from their growing favor with the public, and consequent adoption by many offices, and still more from the fact, that the subject is by no means exhausted, notwithstanding various able articles that have appeared in this Journal, seem to me to render apology unnecessary for again treating of it.

There is no part of the subject of Life Insurance which has occasioned so much difficulty, and given rise to so much diversity of opinion and of practice, as that of the distribution of profits. The methods which have been adopted are very various, and very few of them seem founded upon any intelligible principle.

Many attempts have been made of late years to form an exact theory on this subject, and to deduce systematic rules; but it cannot, I think, be yet said that there is any method which is generally recognised as theoretically correct, and capable of application in all cases.

It has been represented to me that, in view of the influential position occupied by M. Violeine, the quasi official and authoritative character of his book, and the currency likely to be thereby imparted to the erroneous principles employed by him in the treatment of problems of the class to which the first of those I have discussed belongs;—I say it has been represented to me that in these circumstances it might be well to be a little more explicit as to his manner of proceeding. In my discussion of the problem in question I did enough, I believe, to shew that M. Violeine's solution is certainly erroneous. I admit however that I did not succeed to my own satisfaction (nor apparently to that of others) in precisely hitting the blot in it, and, as it were, reducing it to its elements. I think that from the consideration I have since given to the matter, I am now able to point out the fallacy by which it is vitiated, and I therefore willingly accede to the suggestion that has been made to me.