DR. FARE ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF LIFE-TABLES. 803 
dom from common epidemics, or the immunity from cholera, Healthy Districts are found 
in nearly every county. Large tracts of country are, however, so much healthier than 
the rest, that they may be justly called Salubrious Fields ; and it is remarkable that here 
the finest races of animals are bred. The north districts of Northumberland around the 
beautifulCheHot Hills, covered with grasses, ferns, wild thyme, — extending from the region 
of the heaths to the rich cultivated land at their bases, touching each other, or intersected 
by narrow valleys ; the districts extending from the Tees over the North and East Eidings 
of York to Leicestershire, Herefordshire, and parts of Shropshire ; some of the districts of 
Gloucestershire about the Cotswold Hills ; parts of Wales ; North Devon, including Dart- 
moor and Exmoor ; the Surrey and Sussex hills with the Southdowns, — have given names 
to the best breeds of sheep, fowls, cattle, and horses in the kingdom.” ***■*•** 
“ The dry and most inland are not always the healthiest regions of the country. The 
salubrious fields are sometimes watered by running streams, and diversified by lakes ; 
the dew is abundant ; they are often veiled, not by infectious fogs, but by mists drawn 
from the sky as it breathes over them ; the mountains rise above, the ocean rolls at the 
distance below them, as on the coast of Sussex, North Devon, the western region of 
Wales, extending under Snowdon and Cader Idris in. a vast amphitheatre round Car- 
digan Bay ; the lake land and moors of the North, rising between the Irish Sea and 
the German Ocean. The land is sometimes heathy, but may be covered by the sweetest 
herbage and bees feeding on the flowers : the cereal grains, the hop, the timber, are often 
of the finest quality ; the animals are healthy, the native breeds are vigorous, and those 
fine varieties are produced at intervals, which men of the genius of Bakewell, Ellmax, 
Tomkixs, Colling, and 0‘Kelly make the permanent stock of the country. Industry 
and the army receive their best recruits from the population ; while they get their worst 
from the people of the low parts of sickly towns. Agriculture has reclaimed many 
unhealthy districts on the plains, so that a considerable extent of the cultivated land is 
now in a state of comparative salubrity; and vast systems of drainage have subdued the 
noxious fens, although carried out less efficiently than is desirable, and interfered with 
by milldams on the rivers, descending like the Nene from the inland high lands'^.” 
The sanitary condition of the people in these districts is, however, still in many 
respects defective. 
CONCLUSION. 
Halley first pointed out the financial applications of the Life-Table, and first cal- 
culated the values of life annuities. That branch of science, in the various forms of 
life insurance, has since received great developments. The new Table shows that the 
duration of Hfe, among large classes of the population, by no means in unexceptionable 
sanitary conditions, exceeds the term of the ordinary Tables, and proves that life annui- 
ties cannot be sold advantageously by offices, or by the Government, to large classes of 
lives for less than the values deducible from the new Table. 
A new branch of science has been developed since LIalley’s day, — it is the science of 
Public Health. And here a new application of the Life-Table is found. 
* Report to the Registrar- General on Cholera, pp. xcv, xcvi. 
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