Referring to Mr. Sprague's reply to the Discussion on his paper (J. I. A. xix, 324), I would wish to point out that the admission by me, that a company, for its own internal purposes, may discriminate between expenditure on old and on new business, is not an admission of the principle which Mr. Sprague contends for. It required no argument to show that when an office wished to know what its new business was costing, it would be requisite for it to disentangle the expenditure on new business from general outlay. It is no conversion to Mr. Sprague's views to admit this. The point between us is not that, but the more complex one of the common measure to apply to outlay on all business, both old and new.

The position of an entailed proprietor in Scotland (technically called an heir of entail in possession) differs in many important respects from those of a tenant for life and a tenant in tail in England. One fundamental difference is, that the entailed proprietor in Scotland has all the rights of a landed proprietor except those which are taken from him by the deed constituting the entail, whereas the tenant for life in England has only those rights which are expressly conferred upon him by the deed under which he holds. There is a still more important difference as regards the power to disentail the estate. Before the passing of the Rutherfurd Act (11 & 12 Vic., c. 36) Scotch entails were perpetual. The entail might sometimes be set aside after a suit in the Courts, in consequence of some defect or informality—perhaps very slight—in the deed constituting it; or an entail might expire, in consequence of the total failure of heirs; but under no other circumstances could the entail be got rid of.

The law of mortgages is not a subject in which actuaries, as such, can be supposed to take an interest; but the laying out of the large sums in the hands of insurance companies is such an important part of their business, that a few remarks on the subject may be not inappropriate in this Journal.

The progress of life insurance in Germany in the year 1873 was far greater than could have been anticipated from the course of events during the year. For at a time of violent reaction, such as Germany and Austria experienced in the past year, succeeding a period during which mercantile speculations had been engaged in with such frantic eagerness by all classes of the community, we should not have expected to find men either willing or able to give that calm and self-denying consideration to the future, upon which life insurance depends. With the necessaries of life at exorbitant prices, it was natural to suppose that there would be a considerable diminution in the number of those who, after meeting the claims of the day, would be able to provide for the future. While the general state of society thus led to the conclusion that there would be a diminution in the number of insurances, there was also reason to fear that the mortality would be greatly increased through the recent outbreak of cholera, which extended over a large district, and held its ground very firmly for some time. In both respects, the returns for 1873 were more favourable than we expected; and this furnishes another proof of the fact that, in those parts of central Europe from which our returns are derived, life insurance has not yet become so general, that all the occurrences of domestic and social life, or even events involving important changes, have any distinct influence upon its development. It cannot be denied that in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, life insurance is not nearly so well understood as in Great Britain and the United States.

“A father aged 60, and his son aged 30, who hav successiv “life interests in a landed estate, jointly borrow the sum ov £10,000 “from an insurance company, at 5 per-cent interest, upon mortgage “ov their life interests and a policy for £11,000, upon the life ov “the son, effected at the annual premium ov £2. 3s. per-cent. a “private arrangement being made between the borrowers, by which “the father is to pay the interest and premium during his life, and “the son is to pay them subsequently. In what proportion shoud “the £10,000 be divided between the father and the son?”