XXVI. 



Cloud Mean, 7 '70, was + 1 -04 above the average, being the greatest on 

 record in 30 years. 



Ozone Mean, G'93, was — '63 below the average. On four of the wet days 

 saturation (10) was registered. 



Electricity records were 23 ])ositive, with tension from 3'5 to 8 ; 33 negative, 

 with tension from 1 to 8 ; an<l 4 nils. No thunder or lightning obsei-ved. On 

 three nights the Aurora Australis was seen. 



The Deaths registered were only 24, being— 15 12-13 below the average of 

 the preceding 13 years, and the smallest number for any November of the 

 thii-teen. The November average of deaths is the smallest of any month in 

 the year. In the Hospital there were 8 deaths inclusive of an Inquest case, 

 the only inquest in the month. All these cases were admitted from rural 

 districts. Never before has it happened that no deaths of residents in the 

 Hobarton Registration District took place in hospital. Of the 24 deaths 6 

 were respectively aged 1 day, 5 weeks, 8 weeks, 9 weeks, 3 and 4 months. 

 Between the last and 17 years old, not a single death ! One at 17, another 

 at 20, and a third at 22 were all that took place, until 39, at which age there 

 was a death, and 4 more between that and 60 years old ; from GO to 86, at 

 which age the oldest took place, there were 10 deaths. So small a proportion 

 of young and middle-aged persons was never before recorded. There was not 

 a single death in the Zymotic class of diseases, except two babes, registered 

 as dying from diarrhoea and convidsions, can be properly considered to 

 belong to this class. There were 2 deaths irova. consumption, one a youth, 

 aged 22, bom in Hobart Town, the other a man aged 60, born in England. 

 From the details I have given it will be seen that out of a population of 

 25,000 persons in the Hobart Town Registration District only 16 died, being 

 at the rate of less than 8 per 1,000 per annum, or 192 total deaths in the 

 year. The annual average for the previous 13 years, including cases brought 

 to hospital from other districts, is 560 ; the first year of the thirteen (1857) 

 having 581, and the last (1869) only 462. The diminished death-rate of late 

 years, where from the changes in the ages of the population, there ought, by 

 the ordinary laws of mortality, to have been an increased death-rate (Vide 

 report for May), cannot be ascribed solely to improved climatic conditions. 

 Local sanitary improvements must claim a considerable share in the diminu- 

 tion, and of these our improved water-supply, I have data to prove, has been 

 most influential.', Were our scavenging and sewerage so amended as to ensm-e 

 the speedy removal of all animal and vegetable refuse, our dead no longer 

 interred amidst the living, and the ventilation of our abodes and public 

 places of assemblage better attended to, Hobart Town would be, as it ought 

 to be, one of the healthiest towns in the world, its local and climatic advan- 

 tages being unparalleled. No country with whose meteorological condition 

 I have become acquainted, equals ours in the purity of its atmosphere, as 

 tested by the ozonometer. 



