TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 193 



A Proposed Rearrangement of the Registration Districts of England and 

 Wales, for the purpose of facilitating Scientific Inqtdry. By Alfred 

 Haviland, 



The author commenced his paper by stating that the registration districts of 

 England and Wales were fomied for the general purposes of the Poor-Law Admi- 

 nistration, and therefore it could not be expected that they were planned with any 

 view of assisting science ; they had, however, done so when in their present crude 

 and artificial form, and it was generally believed among scientific men that if their 

 boundaries were determined on a natural system, the advantages to meteorology, 

 climatology, and other branches of science would be incalculable, and the expense 

 and confusion of constant alterations avoided. Messrs. Keith Johnston had lately 

 been engaged by him in the rectification and completion of the registration maps 

 of England and Wales, for the purpose of insuring extreme accuracy in his 

 basis map of the geographical distribution of disease in England and Wales. This 

 had involved him in a considerable outlay, but through the recommendation of the 

 Registrar-General, the Treasury, seeing the necessity of the work, had expressed 

 their approval of a grant being paid to the author for the expenses incurred. He 

 urged that the artificial system adopted in defining the boimdaries of the registration 

 districts had been the cause of all this extra work and expense, and that it had 

 nothing whatever to recommend its continuance; on the contrary, it was the 

 fruitful source of repeated alterations, and would continue to be so whilst it was 

 persevered in. On the other hand, the author showed that were a natural system 

 substituted for the present one, and our country divided into districts regulated by 

 its watershed and river system, we should then have in every district a focus of 

 scientific inquiry, whether it be as to the rainfall, temperatm'e, prevalence or strength 

 of wind, agricultural statistics, the produce of our fields, our mines, or our rivers, or 

 for the purpose of registering the occupations, the diseases, or the deaths of the people. 

 Moreover, sucli a system would form the best basis map for every future census, 

 and being once established upon a well-considered and natural plan, would do 

 away with the necessity of those eternal alterations which are now year by year 

 going on, to the utter confusion of the scientific student. In France the water- 

 shed system is adopted in defining and naming the departments ; it is vastly supe- 

 rior to our own, and although its deficiencies are numerous, yet they will act as 

 beacons to us. The author was well aware that such a revolution could not be 

 accomplished imder ten years, therefore he urged the necessity of commencing it at 

 once. Should the natural system be adopted before 1881, it would be ready for 

 the census of that yeai', by which time the Registrar-General will have completed 

 two more decades of mortuaiy records imder the present system, and these, with 

 the one (1851-60) which the author had geographized, will form a most important 

 foundation for all future inquiry. 



On the Aptitude of North- American Indians for Agriculture. 

 By James Hetwood, M.A., F.R.S. 



The wiiter commenced by explaining how the aboriginal Indians in Canada 

 were placed upon reservations, and how they were governed and controlled. He 

 referred more particularly to the settlement of tlie Six Nations — Indians in the 

 Tuscarora reserve on Grand River, in the province of Ontario, where the Indians 

 formed among themselves an agricultural societj-, supporting annual exhibitions of 

 stock and produce, which are assisted by grants from the New England Company, 

 an English corporation founded under Oliver Cromwell, and especially devoted at 

 the present day to the promotion of the welfare of Canadian Indians. 



Reports to the Congress of the United States describe the condition of numerous 

 Indian tribes, among whom the Indian inhabitants of reservations near the Pacific 

 Ocean particularly manifest the results of successful agriculture. 



On the Umatilla reservation in the north-eastern portion of Oregon, the Indians 

 paj' much attention to raising horses and cattle, and are comparatively wealthy. 

 Their crops in 1804 comprised wheat^ oats, Indian corn, potatoes, peas, and garden 

 vegetables. 



1870. 13 



