237 



On the other hand if we turn to the colonies of Australasia it 

 will be found that there is such a close agreement with each 

 other in the general rise and fall of their respective death 

 rates during the last 25 years that it is not easily accounted 

 "for unless it be referred to some super- terrestrial influence of 

 a variable character, which has the effect of intensifying or 

 modifying the death-rate to such an extent that the local 

 causes appear as mere ripples on the swell of a great wave in 

 conjunction with it. Such is the effect of the minor varia- 

 tions of local death-rates that the significance of this common 

 rise and fall can only be fully appreciated when shown in a 

 diagraphical form as in the accompanying plate. It is 

 remarkable to observe how closely the maxima of death-rate 

 agree with Jupiter's movement from aphelion to perihelion, 

 and with the minima of sunspots ; and conversely it is still 

 more surprising to find a corresponding agreement between 

 the minima of the death-rate in the four colonies, viz : — Tas- 

 mania, Victoria, New South Wales, and South Australia, the 

 maxima of sunspots, and the movement of Jupiter from 

 perihelion to aphelion. Surely such a widely based agree- 

 ment cannot be a mere coincidence ; and although it must be 

 confessed that if we take the death-rates of the thirteen 

 principal countries of Europe separately, the results are often 

 conflicting or anomalous, yet it is significant that the mean of 

 all these for the period 1861 to 1882 corresponds in a remark- 

 able way with the movements forming the curves of periodic 

 minima and maxima of the mean of the death-rates of the 

 various colonies of Australasia. 



Should the same curve maintain its regular course it would 

 appear probable that the death-rate in Australasia would 

 attain its next maximum period about the years 1885 to 1887, 



Still, notwithstanding the confidence with which Wolf, 

 Sabine, Balfour Stewart, Meldrum, and other eminent inves- 

 tigators maintain the coincidence of the periodicity of solar 

 and other terrestrial jDhenomena, it is clear that the death-rate 

 coincidences are not sufficiently broad and regular to justify 

 prediction, although there is a presumption in favour of a 

 relatively low death-rate in Australasia during years of sun- 

 spot maxima, and a more or less relatively high death-rate 

 during years of sunspot minima. Although the several 

 thinly populated Australian colonies are as widely separate 

 as the various States of Europe, it is interesting to observe 

 how much more closely the rise and fall of the death-rates of 

 the former correspond to each other, than do the death-rates 

 of the densely populated States of Europe. 



It is also noteworthy that the mean death-rate of the 

 Colonies of Australia, for the last twenty years, is lower than 

 the mean death-rate of Europe by about 10 per 1,000 persons 



