FOR BILLS OF MORTALITY AND FECUNDITY.
It is desirable that a bill should be published for each year separately, to show how the rates, both of mortality and fecundity, vary with the circumstances of the people in different years ; and, from these yearly bills, nothing is more easy than to derive others for longer periods.
According to the form A, the births of both sexes in each year will be distinguished, and the born alive from the still-born ; the number of marriages will also be given.
In this, and all other cases where those who under take the formation of such bills are either unable or unwilling to distinguish all the particulars indicated, the reasons for the omissions should be inserted in the spaces set apart for the numbers omitted. But, where the still-born are not distinguished as such, they should be omitted entirely, and the number of births stated should be that of the children born alive.
The numbers of deaths of the two sexes in each interval of age, during any year, may, as they are collected from the registers, be conveniently, dis posed according to the form B ; the intervals be tween 5 years of age and 100, being each 5 years ; and the number dying at each age above 100 should be particularly specified. It would, indeed, be much
better to give a separate statement of the number of each sex dying in each year of age above 90 ; for the whole number is never very great, and any error committed at the greater ages, in constructing a table of mortality, affects all the preceding numbers in the table.
But some persons, who would not take the trouble of forming bills of mortality in which the ages are to be so minutely distinguished, might yet be willing to furnish them with the requisite care, according to the form b, which might still be very useful ; and, indeed, from 20 to 60 years of age, intervals of 10 years each might do very well.
The value of Bills of Mortality would be greatly enhanced, by inserting in them the contemporaneous wages of labourers in agriculture, and of the work men employed in the inure common kinds of trade and manufacture carried on among the people they relate to ; also the prices of the necessaries of life which persons of these descriptions consume the most of ; together with any thing uncommon in the seasons or the crops, and every material change in the circumstances of the people.