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Donations-Contd.

By whom Presented (when not purchased).

Donations.

(e) Societies, &c. (British)-Contd.

1896.

The Institute

Sanitary Institute. Journal. Vol. xvii, part 2.
Also Illustrated List of Exhibits to which Medals
have been awarded by the Institute, 1889-94..
Society of Accountants and Auditors. List of Members,
Articles, Bye-Laws, and catalogue of Library, 1896.... J
Society of Arts. Journal. (Current numbers)
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign
Parts. Report for 1895. 8vo.

Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland."
Journal. Vol. x, part 76, 8vo. 1896. Also Title
page and Index for vol. ix

Surveyors' Institution. Transactions. (Current numbers)

The Society

The Institution

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Palmer's Quarterly Index to the Times

Publishers' Circular. (Current weekly numbers)

Vacher's Parliamentary Companion. (Current numbers).

Purchased

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*Foreign and Colonial Periodicals will be found under the various Countries

or Colonies in which they are issued.

JOURNAL

OF THE ROYAL STATISTICAL SOCIETY,

DECEMBER, 1896.

On some DEVELOPMENTS of STATISTICAL RESEARCH and METHODS during RECENT YEARS.

The INAUGURAL ADDRESS of JOHN BIDDULPH MARTIN, ESQ., M.A., PRESIDENT of the ROYAL STATISTICAL SOCIETY. Session 1896-97. DELIVERED 17th November, 1896.

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THE Royal Statistical Society has conferred on me the honour of succeeding, as the thirty-third occupant of this chair, to the dignity of the Presidential office. The honour and dignity of presiding over a Society such as this, which has in successive years deservedly obtained an ever-increasing measure of public consideration, will be freely acknowledged not only by the Fellows of the Society, but also by those who, though not within its ranks, are interested in the studies which we pursue. This diguity is associated with an equal measure of responsibility. It is my privilege to address a Society which has been presided over in the past by statesmen whose names are in the first rank of those who have been associated with the conduct of public affairs, such as the first Earl Russell, who is, and probably always will be, better known as Lord John Russell, the late Earl of Derby, Mr. Goschen, and Mr. Gladstone. The list of your past Presidents includes also 2 Q

VOL. LIX. PART IV.

names such as those of Dr. Farr and Sir Robert Giffen, experts whose duties may be said to entitle them to the name of profes sional statisticians; and your Presidential chair has in turn been occupied by men such as Lord Overstone and William Newmarch, whose lives were passed, as has been my own, in the practical handling of the business affairs of the financial metropolis of the world, and who at the same time have been no less eminent as statisticians and economists than they were as bankers.

But in my own case the responsibilities of assuming the Presi dency are increased by the fact that it comes to me after a membership of the Society extending over twenty-two years, during the past sixteen of which I have served with pleasure to myself, and I trust without detriment to the Society, in the dual capacity of Honorary and Foreign Secretary. The knowledge thus acquired of the methods and work of the Society, of its aims and means of attaining them, imparts to me a feeling that if much is conferred on me, much also is required.

To cne who has for so long a period of time served you to the Fest of his ability as a member of your executive, it may be pardoned if the delivery of a Presidential Address does not appear to be the most essential of his functions. To carry out the objects of the Society on the basis laid down at its inception, as widened in scope by experience; to extend still further on legitimate lines its work and influence; to maintain the unbroken harmony which has hitherto prevailed between its officials and the general body of Fellows; these appear to me to be aims no less worthy than the mere egotistical ambition to lay before you an address that shall deserve to take its place among, or if possible outrival, those to which you have listened in the past.

More than one of my predecessors has devoted a portion at Icast of his address to the year's work of our Society, and especially to a notice of those whose loss the Society has had from time to time to deplore. I may be excused if I take a wider survey, and pass in review the names of those who, in the period during which I have been associated with the Society, have dropped out of the ranks. We have lost, since 1874, no less than twelve of our ex-presidents—

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The list of Honorary Fellows who during the same period have been taken from us, comprises the following names familiar to all who are conversant with statistical and economic study :

1874. Adolphe Quetelet.

1876. Louis F. M. R. Wolowski.

1891. A. Beaujon.

A. Vesselovsky.

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Dr. Charles Keleti.

1879. Michel Chevalier.

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1895.

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1896.

Henry H. Hayter, C.M.G.
J. B. Léon Say.

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The death roll of ordinary Fellows is more formidable still. J extract from it the following list:

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With almost all of these, either as your Honorary Secretary or otherwise, I was myself brought into immediate and in some cases close relationship. Such losses as those here recorded are heavy, they might almost appear to be irreparable. But it is true that in our Society, as elsewhere, no man is indispensable, and if we have to deplore losses such as those enumerated above, we may the more congratulate ourselves that our ranks have been filled up, and the places of the missing occupied by not unworthy successors.

If new workers have come forward to take the place of those who have passed away, new work and more ample fields of inquiry have, with the lapse of time, been provided ready to their hand. It is impossible on this occasion not to refer briefly to a period of time more than twice as long in its duration as that of my own individual connexion with our Society. Public attention is at this present time directed to the unprecedented length of the period to which our Sovereign's reign has been prolonged. Comparisons have been made, and contrasts have been drawn in many quarters between the economic and social conditions at present existing, and those which obtained in 1837. The establishment of our Society in 1834 was slightly antecedent in date to the accession of Her Majesty the Queen to the throne. For present purposes it may be said that our existence has been of equal duration with that of the present reign. Both have been coincident with a development of science, and of the application of

science to the purposes of practical life, without parallel in the history of mankind. The recognition of the scientific laws which govern the development of steam, has led during the past sixty years to its employment for the practical purposes of locomotion by land and water to an extent which, at the beginning of that period, would have been held to be altogether chimerical. The case has been the same with electricity, whose possibilities are as yet by no means exhausted. Sixty years ago the statistics of railways and of steam tonnage were practically non-existent. From their various aspects they now furnish no small amount of matter to the contributors of our papers, and to the contents of our Journal. It is sufficient to mention on this point the name of Mr. John Glover, the worthy recipient of our recently founded Guy Medal, who has laid before us, at decennial intervals, the statistics of the tonnage of our mercantile marine during a period of forty years. The future may be for us no less fertile in supplying materials for statistical inquiry than has been the past. When we look back at the manner in which prophecies as to the limitations of steam locomotion have been falsified, it would be rash to deny the possibility that sixty years hence electrical locomotion by land and water may not be at least as important a topic for the consideration of those who by that time will have succeeded us. It may be that the problems of aerial navigation will then have been more or less completely solved. It is possible that in the art of cycling, which we usually consider merely as a pastime or a fashionable craze, we have already with us the development of an invention which is already exercising a marked economic influence, the statistics of which it may even now be worth while to observe. In matters such as these it is for the statistician to keep a watchful eye on the march of events, to discriminate between the trivial phenomenon and the inception of an economic movement, and by a careful tabulation of the "primary statistical quantity," to present essential facts in a well digested form for the consideration of the economist.

A very cursory perusal of the addresses which have been delivered by my predecessors in office, is sufficient to show how wide a field of selection is open to your President in the choice of a subject. The circumstances of my connexion with our Society have led me to the conclusion that I shall be justified if I devote a part at least of the time at my disposal to a sketch of the marked impetus that has been observable in the collection and study of statistics, both at home and abroad, whether by the direct action of the State, by private initiative, or by way of academic training, during the last twenty or five and twenty years. I cannot sufficiently express my thanks to those Honorary Fellows

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