118 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



age-periods above this age, however, there was an increase. 

 But the earlier age-periods supply so few patients that it is 

 not apparent from these facts alone whether on the whole 

 there was a true increase or decrease of insanity amongst 

 females. We find, however, that during the years 1879-83 

 there were 739 female patients of known age received into the 

 various asylums, and during the years 1894-98 the number 

 was 1,095 ; but, if the populations of the various age-periods 

 had supplied patients in the latter period in the same pro- 

 portion to their numbers as in the former period, the number 

 of admissions from 1894 to 1898 would have been as many as 

 1,230. Thus we get with respect to females a result, as far 

 as the figures are concerned, like to that we formerly obtained 

 for males — namely, an undoubted falling-off in liability to 

 insanity. The same result thus follows for the population as 

 a whole. 



To what degree of correctness the statistics represent the 

 actual state of things is another question, into which I do not 

 propose to enter ; but the concern about the increase of in- 

 sanity, which inspires so many articles, is founded on the 

 figures as roughly put in statistical works, and I have shown 

 that these figures, properly interpreted, afford no justification 

 whatever for the inference usually deduced from them, but 

 rather indicate a strong tendency in the direction of growing 

 sanity. 



If the reasons usually assigned to explain the commonly 

 supposed increase in the tendency to insanity have really any 

 force, if many are now classed as insane that would not have 

 been so classed some years ago, and if many are now placed 

 in institutions for the care of the insane that some time since 

 would not have been so provided for, then there must indeed 

 have been in recent years a very real and very marked 

 diminution in the liability of the New-Zealander to insanity, 

 in spite of modern competition and the disadvantages of city 

 life. In fact, explanations are now wanted to account for 

 statistics indicating a falling-off, and not a growth, in the 

 tendency of the race to insanity. 



Thus far we have considered only the yearly contribu- 

 tion of the colony to the total insane population, and it 

 may not be yet quite clear how it is that the total in- 

 sane population is increasing so much more rapidly than 

 the population as a whole. The explanation lies in the 

 great changes taking place in the age -distribution of the 

 people, which has been fully explained in the paper already 

 referred to. 



Table I. shows that there is no great liability to insanity 

 till about the age of 25, whilst after that age there is no very 

 great change in this liability ; indeed, the number of insane 



