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. 



Eemaeks 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 



