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JOHN WILLIAM PARKER AND SON, 445, WEST STRAND.

1852.

NOTICE.

THE Council of the Statistical Society of London wish it to be under-
stood, that, while they consider it their duty to adopt every means
within their power to test the facts inserted in this Journal, they do
not hold themselves responsible for their accuracy, which must rest
upon the authority of the several Contributors.

LONDON: PRINTED BY HARRISON AND SON, ST. MARTIN'S LANE.

CONTENTS.

Page

OBJECTS AND PROGRESS

OF

THE STATISTICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON,

12, ST. JAMES'S SQUARE.

THE Statistical Society of London was founded on the 15th of March, 1834, in pursuance of a recommendation of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, for the purpose of collecting, arranging, and publishing facts calculated to illustrate the condition and prospects of society, and especially facts which can be stated numerically and arranged in tables. The collection of new statistical materials, it was contemplated, would form only one part of the Society's labours; the condensation, arrangement, and publication of those already existing, whether unpublished, or published only in an expensive or diffuse form, or in foreign languages, being a work of equal usefulness. It was also a prominent object of the Society to form a complete Statistical Library as rapidly as its funds would permit.

Such was the purport of the original prospectus; and now that the Society is in the eighteenth year of a prosperous existence, its Fellows have every reason to revert with satisfaction to this outline of its objects; for it is very seldom that the first designs of a public association for the advancement of science are all carried out with so much success as has attended upon those which that prospectus describes. The resources of the Society were, in the first instance, chiefly devoted, under the direction of its Committee, to the collection of new statistical information, and to this great purpose a part of its funds is still appropriated. Its monthly meetings have cultivated among its Fellows an active spirit of investigation, and brought out the valuable results of much individual labour. Its journal has fulfilled the purpose of condensation and publication; and the valuable. books and papers which have already been collected form a library of facts of no mean utility.

The Sixth Annual Report of the Society, which contains an elaborate description of the scope and system of its labours, divides Statistics into the following chief sections:

I. The Statistics of Physical Geography, Division, and Appropriation; or, geographical and proprietary Statistics.

II. The Statistics of Production; or, agricultural, mining, fishery, manufacturing, and commercial Statistics.

III. The Statistics of Instruction; or, ecclesiastical, scientific, literary, university, and school Statistics.

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