PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 583 
colony, also be several times inserted as an advertisement in all 
the newspapers. The same notices, translated into the Chinese 
language, should be posted in the Chinese quarters of the towns 
and goldtields, and distributed amongst the leading persons of 
the Chinese race. 
After the census has been taken, the Government, the Press, 
and the public are, as may well be supposed, anxious to obtain a 
rough statement of the results as speedily as possible. To afford 
means of satisfying this very natural wish, each sub-enumerator 
should be required to extract from the householders’ schedules he 
collects the totals of the population, distinguishing the sexes, also 
the Chinese and aborigines, and should insert the figures in a 
form supplied to him for that purpose, which he should for- 
ward to his enumerator as soon as completed. From these 
forms the enumerator should make a summary of his whole 
district, adding the columns so that the total result may appear 
in one line, and this summary he should transmit to the central 
office at the earliest possible moment. Immediately all these 
summaries are received, no time should be lost in preparing a 
summary of the whole colony, which should be at once published 
for general information. By following this practice, I was able 
on the occasion of the census of 1881, to publish the approxi- 
mate totals for Victoria exactly one month from the census-day, 
a speediness of publication which, so far as I am aware, has not 
even yet ever been equalled in any other country. 
Various methods have been adopted for compiling a census, but 
so far as my experience goes the most convenient way of perform- 
ing the operation is by means of cards, one card being devoted to 
each individual of the population. The cards may be about the 
size of ordinary playing-cards, and should be of two colours, one 
colour for the males, the other for the females. For their 
custody and arrangement pigeon-holes should be provided, which 
should have partitions, four inches—or little more than the width 
of the cards—apart, and movable cross shelves, constructed to 
slide in and out between the partitions through grooves placed 
every three inches, so that a large or a small space can be ob- 
tained according as it is required to place a greater or a less 
number of cards therein. It will be readily understood that it 
would be a serious matter if the cards, numbering as they must 
one for each person in the colony, were to become disordered or 
misplaced, and that upon the perfection of the methods adopted 
for the arrangement and disposal of the cards, much of the success 
of the card system depends. 
The process of using the cards is as follows:—The name or 
number of the place to which the entries are to relate, and the 
number of the schedule from which the particulars are to be 
extracted, having been stamped upon the card, the entries are to 
be made with pen and ink. After these have been made, and 
