rates of mortality are not without value. We are indebted for these materials also to Mr. Homans.

The Gotha Insurance Bank of Germany, though a recent company, has had a very large and flourishing business. In thirty years, from 1829 to 1858, it has had a larger experience than the Equitable after a duration of seventy years. The number of deaths was 6,779, and of the living 371,131. As more of the members were recently admitted, and the average length of each insurance shorter, the result is not so valuable. This is made manifest from internal evidence in the report it has published. The rate of mortality at the younger ages, when the new members are first admitted, is very low-lower than in any other large company, and not more than one-half of the amount in American offices. Thus, under the age of twenty-six, there were only 12 deaths out of 2,833 living, while the Mutual Life at New York has had 39 out of 3,618, and the Mutual Benefit 29 out of 2,598, and the New York Life 10 out of 985. The whole experience of the Gotha is as follows:

We have constructed a table in the manner before described from these numbers, and the rate of mortality at each age forms the fifth column of the table below. At the middle and later ages this table is founded on so large an experience that it deserves much estimation.

To these tables of English and German offices we now add, in column sixth, the mortality of the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York, as published by their actuary at the end of fifteen years' experience. The number of deaths on which this table is based is 750, and the living amounted to 68,618. These numbers are considerable, but the average duration of their policies has been so short that it lessens very much the value of the resulting rate of mortality. The members have too recently come from the examination of the physician, who had excluded all who were not in perfect health. The past fifteen years cannot for this reason be a good guide for the next fifteen, into which many of the members entered in impaired health, or with broken constitutions, perhaps in the last stages of some fatal disease which must soon terminate their lives and their policies. We shall not hesitate, however, to give this table considerable weight in our proposed combination, because it is American; more for this reason than for its intrinsic merits. The adjustments having been carefully made, and evidently by a mathematical formula, we have not readjusted the table by the method of geometrical averages, which in this case would not have corrected errors, but introduced them. With this report of the Mutual Life of New York we have combined the statement of the Mutual Benefit of New Jersey, whose experience has been published for thirteen years. The deaths in both companies amount to 1,387, but the joint table has the same defect as the former; both extend over too short a period, have too many new members who have been recently examined by the doctor and pronounced sound and well; but as the numbers are larger than before, the joint table deserves to have more weight than the first.

In constructing a table from these materials we united the numbers under 20 with those under 30, and interpolated for the two decades together, on account of the large mortality among the youngest members. Otherwise an excessive mortality, that we regard accidental and possibly due to the California risks taken by the companies, would have showed itself between 15 and 20, which would have been quite anomalous and unusual. The table is in column seventh at the end of this article.

To these two reports which end in 1858, we have united the experience of all the companies doing business in Massachusetts during the year 1859, as published by the Insurance Commissioner of that State. To these we have added the New York Life for fourteen years, (which has been kindly supplied us by the officers of that company,) and also the Southern Mutual for ten years. This last company does its business be

low the latitude where our offices consider it safe to take risks at the ordinary premiums, but as its mortality has been less than the Carlisle, no objection can be taken to this addition.

The particulars furnished from all these sources make up a large number of living and dying, but for the reasons given before, and for internal evidence in the reports themselves, we do not consider them entitled to a large weight in anticipating the future mortality of our American companies. Here is a summary of all, in the form which we used them, the decades being taken from 26 to 35, etc., and not from 20 to 30. From the Mutual Life we have deducted their California risks, as published by Mr. Gill in 1851:

Total....

68,115 54,467 25,334 46,336 2,947 724 637 302 430 33

In all these companies, except the New York Life and the Southern Mutual, there is a singular depression of the mortality between thirtyfive and forty-five. It shows itself in the table we have constructed from the total numbers, (column eighth,) and has been noticed by Mr. Homans, in his report for the New York Mutual. As it is not to be found in the experience at Gotha or London, nor in any of the usual life tables except Mr. Finlaison's, we have supposed it to be the result of incomplete experience, and therefore accidental. But as it appears in the Massachusetts report, as well as in the largest companies of New York and New Jersey, the singularity is very remarkable. We shall await with anxiety the publications of our other American companies, which are soon to appear under the auspices of the convention that recently assembled at New York, and shall then be better able to judge whether the apparent anomaly is due to the California risks, or some other such cause, or is a peculiarity of our American life offices. We do not doubt that it will disappear, for we have the greatest faith in the uniformity of living phe

nomena and laws of mortality in all countries and nations. Variations in the amount of mortality are to be expected with the climate, habits, vices, and condition of the people, but the law of mortality determining the comparative amount at different ages is probably permanent and universal. The law may be complex, more so even than the transcendental formulæ of Gompertz and Edwards indicate; but we believe there is such a law, and that our American experience will, in the end, conform to it.

The Friendly Societies in Great Britain are similar in many respects to the life offices. Both admit only healthy persons, and both agree to pay a certain sum on the death of the member. The number of these Friendly Societies is very large, and their experience would seem to be quite valuable. They are required by various acts of Parliament to make certain returns to the government for every five years, and Mr. Neison has used these returns in the construction of various tables of mortality for different classes of the people.

The numbers in these returns are very large, but we do not think they deserve much confidence. They are liable to all the defects of the experience of the life offices without their claims to accuracy, either as to age or numbers or completeness. The members being of the humbler classes, many of them do not know their age; and the importance of stating this exactly is not very great, as the amount to be paid at death is small and insignificant. The records are, in all probability, kept carelessly; the copies from these reports being made to government, there is little motive to accuracy and care; the returns are only made every five years, and omissions and errors will occur in so long a period that would have been corrected in a shorter time; the disagreements in the results obtained by Mr. Ansell and by Mr. Neison from successive returns is very great; and the improbable conclusions deduced by the latter are evidence of defects in the reports on which they are founded. We shall give, however, two of Mr. Neison's tables, one for the combined mortality of town, city, and rural districts in England, and one for Scotland-tables F. and M. in his collection-but we shall allow them a small weight in our proposed combination. They will be found in columns eight and nine at the end of this article.

Mr. Neison has published a table of mortality deduced from the registrar-general's reports for England and Wales for 1838 to 1841, omitting the first year of the registration, so as to eliminate the probable errors and deficiencies of the first report. The result for males is inserted in the last column of our table, and is worthy of much confidence.

This completes the materials we propose to use to form an average table. They comprise the best tables accessible to us, and we have been aided by the librarians of several of our best American libraries, by the contributions of Mr. James, Actuary of the Girard Office of Philadelphia, Mr. Homans, of the Mutual Life of New York, Mr. Freeman, of the New York Life, and Mr. Wright, of theMassachusetts Commission; to all of whom we return our thanks. The tables are ample for our purpose, and cannot fail to give a most satisfactory mean, free from the errors and anomalies of each.

Art. V.-TRADE WINDS-EVAPORATION IN THEIR CIRCUIT.

THE TRADE WINDS-EVAPORATION IN THEIR CIRCUIT-HIGH RIDGES CAUSE THE CONDENSATION OF THE CLOUDS, AND THUS THE RIVERS OF NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICA-THE APPALACHIAN RIDGE THE DIVIDING LINE OF WATER COURSES DRAINING INTO THE ATLANTIC.

IN the October number of Hunt's Merchants' Magazine we endeavored to present a view of the "Vertical Topography of the Valleys of the St. Lawrence, Ohio, and Mississippi," to prove that the drainage of the States of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, from east to west, exceeded 1,000 feet, and from north to south 300 to 400 feet. That from Chicago, situated 610 feet above tide, the descent to Cairo, at the mouth of the Ohio River, 275 feet above tide, is 335 feet; while the ascent from that place, by the Ohio River, to Pittsburg, is 425 feet, and from the summit of the Alleghany River the fall to Pittsburg is 788 feet, and as a consequence the States of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois could not be "one vast mass of peat -a semi liquid of mud," as lately alleged by the Hamilton (U. C.) Spectator. That from the annual average heat and moisture in these States, they were peculiarly adapted to raise wheat and Indian corn; from the. same cause, so also were the States of Michigan, Wisconsin, and the States formed and forming to the west of the Mississippi, on what is called the "Grand Plateau of the Missouri," from the fact that this immense region of waving prairie-the deposit of animal and vegetable manures for ages-have earlier springs, and are longer free from frosts, than the Valley of the St. Lawrence.

The view taken from Blodget's Climatology, in October, is more than confirmed by Professor Maury's "Physical Geography of the sea," (page 75,) where he shows the effect of the N. E. and S. E. trade winds on the