CHAPTER X. 



MISCELLANEOUS INVESTIGATIONS 

 Between the years 1700 and 1750. 



837. The present Chapter will contain notices of various con- 

 tributions to our subject which were made between the years 1700 

 and 1750. 



338. The first work which claims our attention is the essay by 

 Nicolas Bernoulli, to which we have already alluded in Art. 72 ; it 

 is entitled Specimina Artis conjectandi, ad quwstiones Juris ap- 

 plicatce. This is stated to have been published at Basle in 1709; 

 see Gouraud, page STG. 



It is reprinted in the fourth volume of the Act. Eruditorum.., 

 Supplementa, 1711, where it occupies pages 159 — 170. Allusion 

 is made to the essay in the volume which we have cited in Art. 59, 

 pages 842, 844, 846. 



839. In this essay Nicolas Bernoulli professes to apply mathe- 

 matical calculations to various questions, principally relating to the 

 probability of human life. He takes for a foundation some facts 

 which his uncle James had deduced from the comparison of bills 

 of mortality, namely that out of 100 infants born at the same time 

 64 are alive at the end of the sixth year, 40 at the end of the 

 sixteenth year, and so on, Nicolas Bernoulli considers the following 

 questions : the time at the end of which an absent man of whom 

 no tidings had been received might be considered as dead ; the 



