122 REPORT— 1842. 



their local positions, not only as affording data for useful comparison be- 

 tween towns having a common character, but also between those with dif- 

 ferences in their social organization or in their physical circumstances. Mr. 

 Alexander Watt of Glasgow, who has established a claim to public respect 

 by his Mortality Bills of Glasgow and other statistical works, was good 

 enough to undertake the severe labour of accumulating the facts which con- 

 stitute the present Report. From the very imperfect state of the Registers 

 of Marriages, Births and Deaths in Scotland, it required no ordinary perse- 

 verance and tact to obviate the deficiencies; but Mr. Watt's zeal enabled him 

 to surmount all difficulties, and he presented to the Committee a series of facts 

 absolutely embarrassing from their amount and elaborate and detailed cha- 

 racter. Mr. Watt's facts were comprised in 119 tables, and in the state in 

 which they were presented it was found that, together with the text, the re- 

 port would occupy 199 pages of the annual volume of the Association, a por- 

 tion of the volume which the Committee felt they ought not to desire to have 

 appropriated to their report. With this feeling a re-arrangement of the tables 

 and text was attempted, and by new modelling, dove-tailing and trifling omis- 

 sions of certain columns in the tables, and by some omissions and reconstruc- 

 tion of a few paragraphs in the text, the tables have been reduced to eighty 

 in number, and the pages occupied by the report will not exceed eighty-seven. 

 It is believed that these alterations have been effected without the omission 

 of any important facts; it certainly has been effected without the omission of 

 one of the original tables, although it must be admitted that certain columns 

 have been left out in the marriage tables to which Mr. Watt attaches some 

 weight ; and in justice to him this explanation is made. But the marriage 

 tables, as a whole, are necessarily imperfect, and the omission therefore of 

 details intended to explain the elements of the totals in the marriage tables 

 it was thought might be made without injury. The original manuscript, 

 however, of the report will be deposited in the archives of the British Asso- 

 ciation, and will be available to those whq may be desirous of instituting 

 comparisons between it and the printed report. 



While the sheets of this report were passing through the press, the Fourth 

 Annual Report of the Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages in 

 England was presented to Parliament. As it contained later information than 

 that on which the tables for English towns, LXXV., LXXVII., LXXIX. and 

 LXXX. of this report, had been originally founded, it was thought right, 

 with a view to insure greater accuracy, to substitute the present tables of 

 the mortality in England for the former tables. The elements for determin- 

 ing the averages in tables LXXV., LXXVII, and LXXIX., are supplied by 

 the Registrar-General's report ; and table LXXX., containing the proportion 

 of deaths to the population in certain English towns, has been copied from 

 the same report. The English tables offer valuable standards of comparison 

 with those from the Scottish towns. 



The Committee close their Report on the Vital Statistics of large Towns 

 in Scotland with the expression of their regret that the want of a systematic 

 plan for the registration of marriages, births and deaths renders their report 

 less perfect than they could have desired ; nevertheless the facts accumu- 

 lated open out a prospect of ascertaining, in the continued progress of their 

 researches, certain physical laws in vital statistics, the knowledge of which 

 may be of considerable importance, not only in the formation of more cor- 

 rect estimates of the value of life in the different relations of society, but also 

 in guiding the judgement of the legislator and the philanthropist in encoun- 

 tering the physical evils resulting from moral causes. 



W. H. Sykes, Cliairman of the Committee. 



