Supplemental Remarks. 

 [Read December 6tli, 1887.] 



Many thanks for your [Dr. AVhittell's] courtesy in sending me 

 xiAi analysis of the paper which you have prepared for the next 

 meeting of the Royal Society. I do not know that it is possible 

 for me to add much to what was said in my paper, though I am 

 .surticiently well aware of its imperfections, and indeed confessed 

 to a liability to error from want of local knowledge. I was not 

 long in Adelaide, on the occasion of my recent visit, till I heard 

 the claim made that it is not only the cleanest but the healthiest 

 city in Australasia, the mortality being as low as about 14 per 

 1,000. I could not help the suspicion that there was a fallacy 

 somewhere, and, as you know, had begun collecting information 

 before I left Adelaide to return home. By your kindness I ob- 

 tained a set of the returns of the ^ital statistics of South Aus- 

 tralia for a few years back, and proceeded to analyse these with 

 the hope that something useful might result. 



So far as I can judge from the rather incomplete ncAvspaper 

 report of the discussion which followed the reading of my paper, 

 there had scarcely been sufficient heed given to the saving clauses 

 which it contained. 



The first jDart of the paper was taken up with an endeavour to 

 arrive at some conclusion about the nature and extent of the 

 fallacy which I supposed to exist in the estimate given in the 

 annual report of the Registrar-General, that the death rate of 

 Adelaide and suburbs had been only 14-34 in 1885, and 14-31 in 

 1886. The first and most natural supposition was that the 

 population had somehow been over estimated, and this was con- 

 firmed by the circumstance that the calculated birth rate had 

 come down in about the same proportion as the death rate. Both 

 reductions would meet with their explanation on the suj^position 

 of an over estimate of the population ; while sanitary improve- 

 ments, capable of lowering the death rate, could scarcely be sup- 

 posed to influence the birth rate unfavourably and in about equal 

 degree. The number of the population must always be to some 

 extent uncertain at periods remote from the previous census year, 

 and, as was very distinctly brought out at the census of 1881, 

 there is always a special liability to over estimate the number. 

 Then there was the undoubted fact that South Australia . had 

 been passing through a period of serious depression, leading to an 

 excess of dej)artures over arrivals. The number of persons 

 leaving by sea cannot be known with certainty, and there can be 

 little accurate information about those crossing the border. 



Without claiming absolute accuracy for its results, I believed 

 tliat by taking the number of births as a fixed basis, it would be 



