In response to the suggestion of our President, in his inaugural address for the present session, I commenced to put together some notes which seemed suitable for a paper to be read before one of the provincial institutes. In this I proposed to deal with some practical legal questions which are encountered by officials engaged in various positions outside the head offices of life insurance companies.

My first impressions on considering the magnitude and pretensions of the investigation which I now present to the Institute were that it would perhaps be more suitable for a communication to the Journal, or that at any rate it would scarcely provide sufficient matter to occupy the attention of the meeting for a whole evening. This impression was strengthened when I considered the importance and wide scope of the researches which have been presented as food for our reflection at many of the meetings held in recent years. But, on further consideration, it appeared the subject I had chosen was one likely to give rise to useful discussion. Also I feel that, from a good number of the members of the Institute, at any rate, on whose time and attention the cares of business are continually making greater and greater demands, I may hope for forgiveness if I place before them a somewhat lighter paper than usual.

In his great work, the Théorie Analytique des Probabilités (which may he supposed to embody the author's latest and most matured views respecting that abstruse and difficult subject), Laplace reduces the fundamental principles of the whole doctrine of probabilities (both direct and inverse) to four comprehensive propositions. The four “Principes” of Laplace are extremely well adapted to show how important is the part, in that doctrine, which belongs to the indirect or inverse branch of it; and I know of no means better calculated to throw light upon the subject of this article than the course which I propose in the present section to follow, namely, to illustrate each “Principe” by an example relating to a coin falling head a certain number of times in succession.