PRESIDENTS ADDRESS—SECTION H. 167 
tion as to the eauses of death, and information from year to year 
of the number, sex, and ages of the people by rough enumeration. 
Without the first the modification in old races which changed 
environment will inevitably, though very slowly, produce cannot 
be watched ; without the second it is neither possible to observe 
similar changes in the character of disease which may be expected, 
nor to get early knowledge of the prevalence of such diseases as 
are preventable, nor to discriminate between such as are adven- 
titious (or easily preventable) and such as are bound up with the 
more fixed conditions of life; while without the third it is 
impossible to make just comparison either between the sanitary 
state of this country and of others which may be considered in 
general respects like it, nor between one part of this country and 
another part, nor between separate districts within any one such 
part. While the general particulars registered must be nearly 
the same in all countries, these are points which in a new country 
demand special attention ; they are vital to all the useful purposes, 
both proximate and remote, to which such records may be put. 
But if the laws under which statistical enquiry of this kind is 
carried on in Australia be examined, it will be found that they 
are either copied, or slightly altered, from the English law of 
1837, except in one province, namely, in South Australia. We 
have adopted that law which, framed as it was for another and 
an old country, was a lawyer’s Act. Useful for some legal 
purposes of great importance, it was defective in several respects 
for that other purpose for which it was used—enquiry into the 
conditions under which the people lived, and the vitality of the 
nation. It contained no reference at all to the cause of death ; 
although it amply sufficed the legal object of facilitating and 
systematising registration of births and deaths for purposes 
relating to property, it was little calculated to procure that prompt 
and complete registration which is essential to observation of life. 
Generally, it is under this law that we try to observe and to work 
in Australia to-day. Secondly, although birth-place is a particular 
required, by regulations having the force of law, to be recorded 
in connection with the fact of death, in no province is that 
separate analysis and comment accorded to native-born 
decedents which it is important they should receive. Thirdly, we 
have in similar fashion adopted the decennial census, without 
regard for our special circumstances, and although the defects it 
is universally admitted to show in old countries are scarcely a 
tenth of the defects it has in new and growing countries. ‘These 
three are points in which our present method of observation 
requires speedy reform, for want of which, as it seems to me, the 
elaborate returns annually made by our statists are far from 
possessing a practical value commensurate with the labour 
bestowed upon them. 
Now, if our present methods of observation are thus defective, 
it may be enquired how it happened that we adopted them ; and 
