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Transactions. 



There appear to be exceptions in the particular cases of the Irish and 

 Australians, the former appearing to contribute far more and the latter very- 

 many less than their proportional share to the insane of this country. It 

 is possible an investigation would not prove the contrary, but it probably 

 would show that the situation is not as extreme as it appears. The neces- 

 sary statistics for such an investigation, however, are not available. 



The Females of New Zealand. 



The report further calls attention to the fact that the smaller number 

 of women relatively to men in our mental hospitals contrasts strangely with 

 the numbers in the United Kingdom. This is partly explained in the report 

 by the fact of there being 53,438 fewer women than men in this country, 

 and by the fact that nearly all this deficiency of females obtains in that part 

 of our population which is not New-Zealand-born, and to which the report, 

 as we have seen, attributes a far higher rate of insanity than to the native- 

 born. The proper statement of the case is that the deficiency of males, 

 being almost entirely amongst those not New-Zealand-born, conies mostly 

 in the age-periods where the rate of insanity is greatest. But not only is 

 this generally so, but in the quinquennial age-periods, as we take later periods 

 and the lunacy-rate becomes greater, the deficiency of females also becomes 

 greater, until we come to the last few periods, which do not supply any large 

 portion of the total. We have also to take into account in the comparison 

 that in the United Kingdom and other old countries there is an excess instead 

 of a deficiency of females, due to the greater longevity of females and the 

 greater loss by emigration of males, and that this excess is relatively greatest 

 generally in the ages of maturity, and specially in the later age-periods. 

 The result is that the ratio of females to males in New Zealand for the age- 

 periods at which the lunacy-rate is very high is less than three-quarters and 

 in some periods actually less than one-half of the corresponding ratio in 

 England and Wales. 



Table III gives for quinquennial age-periods the lunacy-rates for New 

 Zealand, and the ratio of females to males both in New Zealand and in Eng- 

 land and Wales. 



Table III. 



Fig. 3 also illustrates the same features. It represents the male and 

 emale populations of New Zealand, and also the population of twenty years 



