NATURAL HISTORY. 
11 
I. Statistics. The committee on Statistics wiH 
have much scope for correct observation^ in which the 
members of the medical profession, more especially, 
will have it in their power to distinguish themselves. 
This committee, the objects of which may be greatly 
assisted by gentlemen who reside much on their 
estates, by men of general science, and by the 
ministers of religion, should be occupied with every 
thing relating to the cultivation of the county ; its 
population ; the employment of the inhabitants of 
its towns, or of the country labourers, their wages, 
diet, the regularity of their labour, their habits of 
life ; descriptions of houses inhabited by different 
classes of persons ; the situation of particular towns, 
cities or villages ; religion ; the number of lunatics, 
idiots, and deformed persons ; hospitals, infirmaries, 
dispensaries, and arrangements for the sick poor, 
and pauper lunatics : prisons and penitentiaries : 
and they should particularly endeavour to obtain 
more correct lists of births, marriages, and deaths, 
than have been hitherto afforded. The importance, 
indeed, of statistical investigations cannot well be 
too highly estimated, for it is only by widely extend- 
ing, throughout the kingdom, this species of enquiry 
on statistical or political philosophy, that this most 
important of all sciences, and which should be 
held most in reverence, can be established on sure 
foundations. No science can furnish to any mind 
capable of receiving useful information so much real 
entertainment ; none can yield such important hints 
for regulating the conduct of individuals, or for 
