Science.

Waikato Times, Volume XIX, Issue 1598, 30 September 1882, Page 2

Science.

A COJIMEECIAL VIEW OP LIFU AND DEATH. The London Sanitaiy liccoid quotes a leccnt writer on vital statistics who calculates that of ten childion born in Norway a little over seven reach their twentieth year ; that in England .and the United States of America somewhat less than seven reach that stage ; that in Franco only five reach it, and in Ireland less than iivo. Ho tells us that in Norway, out of 10,000 bom, x-ather more than one out of three reaches the age of seventy; in England one out of four ; in the United States, if both soxes bo computed, less than one out of four ; in France less than ono out of eight, and in Ireland less than ono out of eleven, and ho adds this significant computation, based on what may bo called the commercial view of tho vital question. In producing dead machinery the cost of all that is broken in the making is charged to the cost of that which is completed. If wo estimated by this samo rule tho cost of rearing children to manhood, if wo calculate up the number of years lived by those who fell with tho years of thoso who pa&sed successfully to manhood, there would bo found between tho two extremes presented in Norway and Ireland — Loth, bo it observed, unnatural — a loss of 120 per cent, greater in tho first year of life, 75 per cent, gieatcr in the fir&t four years of life, and 120 per cent, greater in tlio years between the fifth and tho twentieth, in Ireland than in Norway. In Norway the average lonth of life of the offcctivo population is 39 and rather moro than a half years, in England 354 years, in France not quito 33 years, and in Ireland not quite 29 years. Thus, again comparing the best with the worst of a scale of vitality, in which both aro bad, in Norway tho proportion of tho population that reaches 20 survives nearly 40 yeais, or four-fifths of the effective peiiod, to contribute to the wealth of tho community ; while in belaud the same proportion survives less than 29, ar considerably under three-fifths of tho effective period.