According to Table C not more than half the deaths are set down to 

 specific diseases, and no less than 1,708 out of 3,641 are returned as 

 having resulted from atrophy, debility, convulsions, premature birth, 

 and teething. These terms are in the highest degree indefinite, being 

 either names of symptoms of diseases, not of diseases themselves, or cir- 

 cumstances entered as supplying convenient expressions for assigning a 

 cause of death when the nature of the actual complaint is not known ; 

 588 more of the deaths are set down to diarrhoea and dysentery, an enor- 

 mous proportion. Did not a large number of these deaths result from 

 improper food and treatment, and could not many of them have been 

 averted by proper expedients ? 



The occurrence of whooping-cough, measles, and scarlatina, in epi- 

 demic form, will be readily observed by the increased mortality from 

 those complaints respectively in the first, second, and third year referred 

 to in the table. The increased number of deaths from diarrhoea, always 

 found to be concurrent with a measles epidemic, will also be noticed in 

 the middle year. 



There is happily no ground for supposing that infanticide exists to 

 any appreciable extent in South Australia, not one of the deaths during 

 the three years under notice having been set down to that cause ; 10 

 deaths were set down to suffocation, most probably by overlying, which 

 is not an excessive proportion, and certainly not large enough to raise a 

 suspicion that the deaths were caused intentionally. Accidents, exclu- 

 sive of suffocation, resulted in 19 deaths, or about 1 in 192 from all 

 causes ; and privation and want of breast milk, in 78 deaths, or 1 in 47 ; 

 neither of which are high proportions. 



My duty is, I believe, accomplished in bringing this matter to the 

 notice of the members of the principal scientific Society in South Austra- 

 lia. It is for them to consider whether any action can be suggested 

 which may result in wiping out altogether, or, at any rate, in reducing 

 to the utmost degree of faintness the one dark shadow which at present 

 partially obscures the brightness which should spread over the whole of 

 the fair surface of their promising and interesting colony. 



