In two previous papers (vol. li, p. 77 and p. 211) an account has been given, of the published work of Newton on the subject of Interpolation by means of formulas of Finite Differences, and references have been made to the important letter which Newton sent on 24 October 1676, to Oldenburg, the Secretary of the Royal Society, with the intention that it should be communicated to Leibnitz. The second paper closed with a quotation from this letter, in which Newton mentions “a method [for the “construction of tables by interpolation] which I had almost “decided to describe here for the use of computers.” It has been my good fortune to discover that Newton had prepared an account of his method for inclusion in the letter and that the draft is preserved in the University Library at Cambridge among the Portsmouth Collection of Books and Papers written by or belonging to Sir Isaac Newton. By the freely granted permission of the Syndicate of the Library, I am able to give a reproduction and transcription of the manuscript, and I have added a translation.

The mortality of Europeans in West Africa has on several occasions been the subject of discussion in this Institute or of note in the pages of the Journal. In 1886 Dr. T. B. Sprague read a paper on the mortality of Europeans in the Congo, based on the statistics from Stanley's work on the Pounding of the Free State: In 1892 Dr. T. G. Lyon contributed a paper on mortality in various regions of the world from data gathered from Government Reports of the Colonial Office. In 1897 Dr. A. E. Sprague read a paper on the experience of 971 Belgian Government officials on the Congo and 178 employees of a Dutch Trading Company. In the same year Mr. J. E. Hart gave the experience of Colonial Office officials on the Gold Coast and Sierra Leone. Lastly, in 1911, Mr. Hart furnished a copy of the Report on Vital Statistics of European Government officials in the employ of the Colonial Office for the previous year.