384 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1753. 



coming in, and natives going out, but also tliose of the country ; that, by 

 adding together the results of each, the one may compensate for the other. M. 

 Dupre, de St. Maur, of the French Academy, has begun this on 12 country 

 parishes, and 3 of those of Paris : these I publish, because they are the only 

 tables on which the probabilities of the life of mankind in general can be estab- 

 lished with any certainty." 



On this passage M. Kersseboom says he is greatly surprized, that a philoso- 

 pher should condemn works which he never either saw or read : for it is evident 

 that M. de BufFon never saw his Essays on Political Arithmetic ; and that all 

 which he appears to know of it, is indeed very slightly drawn from M. Depar- 

 cieux's work, who knew no more of it, as he himself makes it appear, than what 

 he found in the Bibliotheque raisonnee for the first 3 months of the year 1743, 

 Tom. 30. This extract happens unluckily not to be made by an able hand ; 

 but, on the contrary, very fit, by its conftision, and the irregularities which run 

 through it, to lead into errors. The corrections, that were made in the 2nd 

 part of the same 30th tome, are not even sufficient to secure the reader from 

 mistakes. 



Yet M. de BufFon, without even reading the work, might have known more 

 of it, though written in a language which he is probably a stranger to ; since 

 Mr. Eames has given an excellent extract of the first essay in English, printed in 

 N° 450 of the Philos. Trans. 



M. K. would say much the same of that excellent piece of the learned Dr. 

 Halley, if his surprize did not increase, the more he reflected, that this work 

 ought to be thoroughly known to a member of the Royal Society of London ; 

 and yet that this very member makes so careless a judgment on it. This reflec- 

 tion leads to another kind of defence of that famous deceased author ; which is 

 to make M. de Buffbn sensible, that " nearly the same degrees of probability of 

 the duration of the life of man in general" are in the table of Dr. Halley, which 

 he would have us think are in the extracts of M. Dupre's observations or tables, 

 which he has published. For this purpose M. K. constructed a table parallel to 

 that of Dr. Halley, which begins with 1000 lives of one year old, and which he 

 found, in the reduction of the great general numbers of Dupre's tables, to have 

 also the smaller numbers analogous; that is, by beginning also with 1000 lives 

 of a year old. Both tables are laid down as follows : 



