ACTUARY. The officer of a life insurance company whose duty it is to advise upon all questions relating to their tariffs, rates of premium, and periodical valuations of assets and liabilities, in which the calculations are based upon mathematical science, the laws of probability, and the statistics of death and of survivorship, in combination with all the scientific formulae connected with interest of money and with commercial finance. In this sense the designation defines a distinct class of professional men, and, as such, it has long been used in the legislative enactments relating to life assurances and annuities, and to friendly societies. In the year 1884 the united members of this profession received a charter of incorporation from the crown, empowering the existing members of two societies theretofore known as the Actuaries Club and the Institute of Actuaries to combine under specified regulations, by the title of that institute, and the present and future members to affix the denoting letters of F.I.A. to their names. The Journal of the Institute of Actuaries is published quarterly, and its twenty-eighth volume has already been reached. The earlier volumes bore the title of The Assurance Magazine. Its contents may with confidence be recommended to students, as embracing papers of the highest importance in connection with the doctrine, history, and practice of life assurance, and vital and other statistics bearing thereon and upon annuities, marine and fire insurance. The designation of actuary has also been long applied to certain officers invested with duties, more or less like the above, in savings banks and in government offices such as those of the commissioners for the reduction of the national debt, the war office, etc. It has also been applied in the last two centuries to the clerk to the convocation of clergy, but the name is in this case derived from his being the recording officer of the acts arising out of the deliberations of that ancient body, in the same way that the "actuar," a functionary of the courts of justice in Germany, has to record and to see to the promulgation of their decrees. An account of the designation of actuaries in the case of public officers of other kinds in ancient Greece and Rome, may be read in Sir George Cornwall LEWIS'S Methods of reasoning in matters of Politics (see INSURANCE). F. H. AMTS. An expression of Roman law used to indicate the right of an adjoining owner to drive cattle and take carts over his neighbour's land. E. 8.