M. Wargentin, who was one of the Commissioners of the Tabellviirket, inserted in the Transactions of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Stockholm, for the years 1754 and 1755, papers on the usefulness of annual registers of births and deaths in a country ; which, like all his other productions, were written with much judgment and modesty ; but, to illustrate the subject, he was generally under the necessity of borrowing materials from the writings of others ; as, at that time, he was only in possession of the results of the Swedish returns for the single year 1749. In the same Transactions, for the year 1766, he insert ed a paper on the mortality in Sweden, wherein he gave tables exhibiting the number of the living of each sex in each interval of age, in the years 1757, 1760, and 1768 ; also the number of annual deaths of each age and sex during a period of nine years, commencing with 1755, both for all Sweden and Finland, and for Stockholm separately; with other interesting results of the registers and enumera tions, and many judicious observations upon them.
This paper of M. Wargentin's is more valuable than all that had previously been published on the subject; it is also to be found in the French abridg ment of the Stockholm Transactions, in the eleventh volume of the Collection Acadeinique (pantie bran gere), which abridgment was also published ova. rately, at Paris, in 1772.
Dr Price. The first edition of Dr Price's Observations on Reversionary Payments appeared in 1771, and contained " observations on the expectations of lives, the increase of mankind, the number of inha bitants in London, and the influence of great towns on health and population," which had been published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1769, and added considerably to the information on those sub jects which had been previously before the puhlic ; also observations on the proper methods of construct ing tables of mortality, mentioned at the commence ment of this article, and which we shall have occa sion to notice again.
In the Philosophical Transactions for the years 1774 and 1775, were insetted two excellent papers' by Dr Haygarth of Chester, wherein he gave the Bills of Mortality for that city, for the years 1772 and 1778 respectively, in a form calculated to ex hibit, at one view, the most' useful and interesting information such bills can afford without calcula tion, and presenting to the calculator data that are essential to the solution of the most important ques tions respecting the state of the population. Three
papers by Dr Percival (also of considerable merit) appeared in the same Transactions about this time, relating principally to'the population of Manchester and its neighbourhood.
In 1778 was published, at Paris, in 8vo, the work I entitled Recherches at Considerations sur la Popu lation de la France, par M. Moheau. This book is agreeably written, in a way entirely popular, and will probably be perused with more pleasure, there fore, also with more profit, by the generality Of read ers, than any other on the subject of population. It contains a great tables, for many of which he was indebted • to other writers, especially to M. Messance ; hut he has also given many that are ori ginal, derived from the Bills of Mortality and actual enumerations of the people, though, without explain ing a satisfactory manner how he obtained his which, if it be correct, must have cost great labour. In his preface he says, "il est tel page de ce livre qui a coati nicessairement deux moss de travail, et un volume de chUtes." The fourth edition of liDr Price's Observations on Reversionary Payments appeared in 1788, and con tained much new and valuable information on these subjects, as has already been observed in the histo rical introduction to the article ANNUITIES in this Supplement.
In 1786 was published, at Petersburgh, in the Acts of the Academy of Sciences there, for the year 1782, an essay by M. Krafft, on the marriages, births, and buri als, at St Petersburgh, during a period of 17 years, from 1764 to 1780, preceded by a general exposition of the uses such tables might be applied to, if the observations they record were extended over entire governments in Russia. This paper contains seven teen tables, which show the number of deaths at each age, and by each of the principal diseases, to gether with the numbers of marriages and bap tisms ; the numbers in each case, being _given for each of the 17 years separately, as well as for the whole term ; and the sexes are always distinguish. ed ; as are likewise foreigners from the native Rua.
These tables would have been rendered very va luable, had they been accompanied by statements of the numbers of the living of each sex in the differ ent intervals of age ; but fbr want of this informa tion, it is difficult to apply them to any useful pur pose, and many of the inferences M. Krafft has drawn from them are very uncertain.