Dr. Soetbeer's table shows prices in the port of Hamburg, Germany, of 100 commodities, mostly raw materials, joined with the export prices of 14 commodities (manufactures) in England, from 1851 to 1891. Mr. Sauerbeck's table shows English prices of 56 commodities from 1846 to 1891. The _Economist_ table also shows English prices of twenty-two commodities from 1860 to 1892. The discrepancies between these different authorities, as shown by the variations in the lines of the four diagrams, call for a few words of explanation. It would naturally be expected that some differences in average prices would exist between different countries, and part of the discrepancies may be accounted for in this way, since there are included in all the tables, among other commodities, such as wood and coal, of which the prices might vary considerably in different countries independently of one another. Several changes in the tariff in this country during the last fifty years would account for some discrepancies between United States prices and the others. Furthermore, the method by which these tables were in the main prepared, that of taking simple averages of the percentage of rise or fall in price, thus giving to each commodity the same weight in the result, regardless of its importance in commerce, is open to serious objection, and doubtless accounts for many of the discrepancies that exist. For example, the great rise in prices during the period of our civil war, as shown in the _Economist_ and the United States tables, above those shown in the other two tables, is doubtless due to the fact that in the _Economist_ table, four out of the twenty-two commodities in the list are either raw cotton or cotton manufactures, and the great rise in price of cotton during the war (a rise of from 300 to 400 per cent.) is given an undue importance in the result. The same cause may affect the United States table, to some extent, but a more potent factor in this table is the circumstance that this country, during the period, was using an inconvertible paper money in which all prices were expressed, while gold was a commodity subject to speculation, and the price of which was much affected thereby; and, in reducing currency prices to gold prices, for this table a somewhat abnormal result is produced. The _Economist_ list, it must be said, contains too few commodities to be a reliable index of all. The United States list is sufficiently large, but the articles selected may be open to some criticism. The lists of Mr. Sauerbeck and Dr. Soetbeer are preferable, but all are open to the objection, above noted, of not giving a weight to each commodity in proportion to its importance, and none of them can therefore be regarded as anything but approximations to the truth. They embrace, however, the best information on the subject extant.