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The following table gives the infant death-rate per 1,000 during the past five years:-

1896.

745

1897.

593

1898.

630

1899.

848

1900.

928

It will be observed that the year in which the rate was lowest was the only year of the five in which no epidemic of Bubonic Fever occurred.

It is generally stated that in China the infant death-rate bears a close relationship to the degree of prosperity of the mass of the population, and that when the rice crops are bad and the pinch of poverty is felt, it is the infants who must be the first to go. If we can apply this principle to this Colony it suggests that its present general prosperity does not by any means imply the prosperity of the masses, but that on the contrary high wages are apt to prove a most inadequate compensation for high rentals and dear food.

The following is a table of the age-periods at which the several deaths occurred:-

Under 1

month.

1-12 months.

1-5 years.

5-15 years.

15-25 years.

25-45 years.

45-60 years.

60 years and

over.

unknown.

Ages

Totals.

Chinese, Non-Chinese,

759

619

16

16

705 452

14

9

7261,724

59

775 706

5 6,471

125

42

19

302

Totals,

775

635 719 461

7851,849

817 725

6,773

Percentages,

11.5

9.4

10.6 6.8 11.6 27.2 12.1 10.7 0.1

DEATHS AMONG THE CHINESE.

CHEST DISEASES.

The total number of deaths among the Chinese from Respiratory diseases was 1,376 or 21.2 per cent. of the total Chinese deaths. This represents a death-rate from these diseases of 5.1 per 1,000 ̊ as compared with 4.7 per 1,000 in 1899 and 5.1 per 1,000 in 1898.

As in former years the death-rate from these causes was far heavier among the boat population than among the land population, being 6.9 per 1,000 among the former as compared with 4.8 per 1,000 among the latter.

The number of deaths of Chinese from Phthisis alone was 845, or 61.4 per cent, of the total deaths from the Respiratory diseases; this disease is intimately associated with overcrowded and insa- nitary dwellings.

NERVOUS DISEASES.

The deaths of Chinese recorded under this heading number 1,155 and no less than 816 of these or 70.6 per cent. occurred in infants under one year of age, the alleged causes of death being Tetanus, Trismus and allied disorders of a convulsive type.

The number of deaths from these diseases during the past five years has been as follows:-

1896,

1897,

1898,

1899,

1900.

711

655

572

709

816

Almost the whole of the infants, whose deaths are recorded as due to these convulsive diseases, are left at one or other of the various Convents, in a moribund condition, and are interred without post-mortem examination, and apart therefore from the question of the induction of these diseases in some cases by starvation and criminal neglect, there is a strong probability that not a few of them have died of Bubonic Fever, Enteric Fever or other Zymotic disease. It would conduce therefore to greater accuracy in the sickness and mortality returns of the Colony, if it could be arranged that all these bodies should be examined post-mortem by a medical man, and a correct certificate of death issued.