In adventuring upon a Second Presidential Address, the energy of hope and freshness which stimulated me in the former effort have vanished into trepidation of feeling. For I am unhappily conscious that I then exhausted any meagre resources I possessed of novel presentation of thought and research, and was reduced to virtual bankruptcy of serviceable suggestiveness which the interval of time has failed to annul.

The publication of the tables of mortality based upon the experience, collected by the Committee representing the four principal insurance companies of France, puts us in possession of an extensive and valuable body of statistics bearing upon the mortality of assured lives and annuitants in that country, and at the same time places the Actuarial profession under a considerable obligation to the Committee of French Actuaries to whom we are indebted for the collection and publication of the data and the resulting monetary tables. As in this country, the life assurance companies on the Continent had for a long time, necessarily, to depend upon statistics of mortality based upon observations of the population generally, which, whatever the skill with which they were prepared, were not only affected by the uncertainty attaching to all such statistics, but were not in any case specially suited to represent the probable mortality, either of assured lives or annuitants. The earliest of these tables, to which any value could be attached, are those of Deparcieux and Duvillard, corresponding in point of date, approximately, to the Northampton and Carlisle Tables in England, and it was not until 1860 that the three companies, the Compagnie d'Assurances Generales, Union, and Nationale, published their annuity experience, nor until 1874 that the first of these companies published a table representing the mortality experience of their assurants.

The question of the rate of mortality experienced by residents on the West Coast of Africa, has recently attracted considerable attention among actuaries. And indeed it is one of increasing importance. Partly owing to the growth of the Liverpool trade with the West Coast, partly owing to the spread of European ideas (including that of life assurance) among the natives, the number of proposals to life offices from residents in Africa is each year becoming greater. It is most desirable, therefore, that some attempt should be made as soon as possible to measure the extra risk of residence on the West Coast, and it is with the object of assisting such an attempt that the present note is offered to the readers of the Journal

I should be most obliged if you would be kind enough, to give me your opinion on the following point.

You know the Austrian Scheme for compensation for accidents of Labour and the allowances it provides, particularly in case of death of the Workman.