The Census of British Guiana. 41 
April, 1891. This was the first time the work was done by 
the General Register Office of the colony; the former 
method of nominating special Census Boards for each 
county, to work under the direction and supervision of the 
Government Secretary, having been abandoned. The 
Combined Court voted a considerable sum of money to 
defray the necessary expenses, and Mr. DALTON states 
that he had drawn up a table showing the actual sum 
spent and the cost of enumerating and tabulating each 
person, but this has not been printed. The printed forms 
used weighed two and a half tons. There were 211 Com- 
missioners and 1,078 enumerators employed. The last 
householder's schedule was received by the Census Office 
on the 6th of May. Considering the difficulty of communi- 
cation with the interior of the colony, this despatch must 
have required a considerable amount of energy. An ab- 
stracted return of the population was finished and laid 
before the Court of Policy by the Census Officer on the 
nth of May. In his report the Registrar General gently 
hints at a want of accuracy in some of the returns. 
The first Census of the combined three counties of the 
colony was made in 1841, some years after the union of 
the counties under the style of British Guiana. At the 
period of the union, March 1831, an estimate of the 
population, says the Editor of the Local Directory for 
1891, can be formed from a census of the free population 
which had been taken for Demerary and Essequebo on 
October 31st, 1829, and for Berbice on October 27th, 
1827, together with the slave registers of the three 
counties. There was some diminution in the number 
of slaves in Essequebo and Demerary to the extent of 
2,600, so that the population in March 1831 was not 
F 
