---------+------------------------------+---------------------------- | Of 100,000 born, the numbers | Annual Death Rates per 1000 Age. | surviving at each age. | living in each successive | | interval of age. ---------+---------+----------+---------+---------+---------+-------- | Three | Five | Three | Three | Five | Three | Rural |Mining and|Selected | Rural |Mining & |Selected |Counties.| Manuf’g | Towns. |Counties.|Manuf’g | Towns. | | Counties.| | |Counties.| ---------+---------+--- ------+---------+---------+---------+-------- At Birth | 100,000 | 100,000 | 100,000 | 213 | 331 | 382 3 mths. | 94,820 | 92,051 | 90,874 | 75 | 154 | 240 6 ” | 93,068 | 88,574 | 85,574 | 61 | 128 | 180 12 ” | 90,283 | 83,081 | 78,197 | -- | -- | -- ---------+---------+----------+---------+---------+---------+-------- =Age-periods and Mortality.=--The table shews at a glance that there are more than double as many deaths in the selected towns as in the rural counties--22,000 as against 10,000, whilst the manufacturing counties stand at 17,000. It must, however, be observed that this last group contains the textile districts and various other typically unhealthy trade areas, so that it is scarcely a fair criterion. An examination of more detailed statistics which have been reduced to a tabular shape shew, as the Registrar-General points out, that in the rural counties and the three selected towns the mortality is at its maximum in the first week, falls heavily in the second week, remains at much the same level during the third week, and then shews a fresh very considerable decline in the fourth. To summarise his conclusions as to the points of likeness between counties and towns: “Both shew an excessively high mortality in the earliest days of life, which becomes less and less as days, weeks, and months pass by, until the seventh or eighth month has elapsed, when the decline either is arrested or becomes very much smaller. In both the mortality is so high in the first three days, or even in the entire first week, that, were it maintained without diminution, every infant would die without nearly completing one year of its existence.” But now coming to the points of difference. We have seen in the first place that the town rate is more than twice as high as the country. But the town rate is not merely higher for the whole period, but higher for each fraction of the year. Moreover, the town rates are most in excess of the country ones, not in the earliest weeks or months of infancy, but in the later months. “In the first week of life, the town rate exceeds the rural rate by 23 per cent., in the second week by 64 per cent., in the third week by 83 per cent., and in the fourth week by 97 per cent. The same result comes