500 Transactions.— Miscellaneous. 
Alcoholism is a disease that is happily dying out before the spread of 
civilization, the absence of hardships, the easy attainment of comforts, and 
the lessening dulness of colonial life. 
Remarks on Diseases YET UNKNOWN IN New ZEALAND. 
A scrutiny of these last reveals the encouraging fact that New Zealand 
is as yet free from some of the most terrible curses which afflict the human 
race—viz., smallpox, typhus, cholera, plague, yellow fever. That all 
malarial fevers are absent. That no healthy inhabitant will get ague or 
_ dysentery or be infected by parasites other than those common in Great 
Britain. 
Remarks on Statistical Tables, By F. W. FRANKLAND. 
** Frequent comparisons have been made between the general death-rate 
of New Zealand and the death-rates which obtain in England and other 
countries; and it has been sought to establish on the basis of this com- 
parison the fact of the salubrity of this country. The fact that the annual 
number of deaths in New Zealand is 11 or 12 per 1,000 living, and that in 
England it is 23 per 1,000 living, has been held by some to prove that, 
whatever may be the reason, the human constitution resists death more 
successfully here than in the mother-country. Even so high an authority as 
Dr. Drysdale, who has done so much for the propagation of sound views 
on hygienic matters, appears to have recently fallen into this error. To 
expose the fallacy of the reasoning we have referred to, it is only necessary 
to point out that in every country the liability of an individual to death 
varies enormously according to the age of the individual. It is, in mathe- 
matical language, a function of the age. 
“The liability to death is always very high during the first year of 
life, and decreases with great rapidity till the age of 10 or 12 is attained, 
when it reaches a minimum. The annual deaths among 10,000 children, 
aged about 10 or 12, would be fewer than those among 10,000 indi- 
viduals at any other age of life. With the advent of puberty, the 
liability to death begins to increase, and, barring a short halt during 
the early period of manhood, it increases progressively, and with con- 
stantly augmenting rapidity, throughout all the rest of life, till in old age 
it is higher even than in infancy. It follows from this that the general 
death-rate of a country must depend on the distribution of the popu- 
lation according to age, and that, until this distribution is taken into 
account, it is absolutely valueless as a test of the real vitality of the in- 
habitants. A moment's reflection will convince the reader, and a very 
short consultation of statistical tables will bear the conviction out, that in 
New Zealand there is a much larger proportion of people at the younger 
and middle ages of life, than there is in an old and settled country like 
