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234 sity in the laws and regulations adopted concerning the registration of deaths in various states and cities, especially in the forms employed for returning the deaths, and in the opinions of the local officers as to the importance of certain facts. In many places essential facts are omitted; in others they may be called for, but perhaps not used in the compilations of the local officers, and therefore not rigidly insisted upon; in still others the inquiry may be loosely stated, affording grounds for very different constructions.

The effect of these diversities is very apparent when—as in the census work—the effort is made to combine and analyze the returns from all such areas. This matter is treated at considerable length in the census report, and it is hoped that in future reports some of these defects may be remedied.

If the legislation now pending before Congress is enacted, and a permanent census service established upon the plan proposed by Hon. Carroll D. Wright, commissioner of labor, in charge of the eleventh census, and which in its relation to mortality and vital statistics was discussed by the writer in a paper read before the American Statistical Association (Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. V, No. 37, March 1897), there will be an annual report issued on this subject which will bring the central work of compilation much more closely in touch with that of the local statisticians.

Fort Smith, Ark.

Dubuque, Ia.

Toledo, O.

Alameda, Cal.

Keokuk, Ia.

Allegheny, Pa.

Fresno, Cal.

Muscatine, Ia.

Altoona, Pa.

Los Angeles, Cal.

Louisville, Ky.

Erie, Pa.

Oakland, Cal.

Paducah, Ky.

Norristown, Pa.

Sacramento, Cal.

New Orleans, La.

Philadelphia, Pa.

San Francisco, Cal.

Lewiston, Me.

Pittsburg, Pa.

San Jose, Cal.

Baltimore, Md.

Reading, Pa.

Stockton, Cal.

Detroit, Mich.

Scranton, Pa.

Denver, Colo.

Manistee, Mich.

Titusville, Pa.