the Population Returns of Plymouth for 182L 271 
and by which means the number of inhabitants was very cor- 
rectly ascertained, and much useful information derived from 
the attempt, as a groundwork for other inquiries of a like kind. 
In the progress of the investigation, however, it happened, that 
some uncertainty appeared to exist in the population returns for 
one of the two parishes composing the town ; and upon sub- 
mitting the results of each parish to the operation of the same 
algebraical test, the conclusions were not found to accord with 
each other. The details of the inquiry may possibly be of some 
practical utility to the cultivator of statistics ; and hence a short 
account of the investigations which led to the curious discovery 
of the Registered Seamen having been included in the former 
census' of the people, is added for his satisfaction. 
In the note before alluded to, it was remarked, that the town 
was divided into a number of small sections, and two gentlemen 
appointed to each. The returns for each section were collected 
as soon as the enumeration was completed, and the aggregate 
amount of the houses, families, persons, and other particulars 
relative to the census, was then found for each parish, and from 
which the following comparative Table was deduced, by com- 
paring the several results with the corresponding particulars in 
the returns of 1811. 
Parish of St Andrew. 
Parish of Charles. 
Inhabited Houses, Increment, 
157 
Increment, 
180 
Families, - Increment, 
124 
Increment, 
7 5 
Persons, - Decrement, 
133 
Increment, 
921 
On finding large increments in all the particulars appertain- 
ing to the parish of Charles, and that the inhabited houses, and 
families of St Andrew, likewise presented additions of a cor- 
responding kind, but that in the persons actually enumerated, 
there was a decrement , some curiosity was necessarily excited, as 
to the causes which could have possibly produced results of so 
very dissimilar a nature, in two parishes perfectly contiguous to 
each other, subject to the same vicissitudes of mortality, and in- 
fluenced in corresponding degrees by the ordinary tide of events. 
The first natural step in an inquiry of this kind, was to dis- 
cover how far the supposed anomaly was sanctioned by the re- 
gisters of marriages, baptisms and deaths, preserved in the pa- 
rish records. A reference to these, however, only tended to 
