Omitting from consideration the speculative and evanescent schemes which were the precursors of life assurance companies, and taking into account only the properly-constituted life offices, we find that up to 1 January 1837 the total number of such companies which had been established was 94, of which 20 had ceased to exist, leaving 74 then in operation. The average age of these 74 companies was 17¾ years. Not more than 18 of them had been 25 years in existence, while the remaining 56 had only attained an average age of 7 years. It at first strikes us as a very remarkable circumstance that only 20 offices out of a total of 102 had succumbed in the long period of 131 years, dating from 1706, when the Amicable was founded: but it has to be borne in mind that in 1837 the great majority of the offices had not attained an age sufficient to test their stability.

A paper bearing the title “Life Offices:—in reference to Expenses, New Business, Profit divided, and Competition”, was read before the Institute at its Ordinary Sessional Meeting on 25 March last, and was followed by a discussion, of which a summary is appended hereto.

From the nature of the subject it was necessary that the author should quote from the Board of Trade Returns of the various life offices, and these quotations being in such a form as to enable anyone versed in the business of life insurance to identify in various instances the companies to which they related, it was considered by the Council of the Institute desirable that, acting in conformity with its practice not to give countenance to criticisms upon the affairs of individual life offices, only an abstract of the leading features of the paper should be given instead of printing the paper and tables in extenso.

Probably in no branch of actuarial work have American experts more conspicuously shown those qualities of ingenuity and originality which are freely recognized as among the most prominent characteristics of their fellow-countrymen, than in that which may be summed up, generically, in the title, “Mortality Experience.” And it is remarkable how many instances of their enterprise in this respect have, within the last few years, been en évidence, whereby our available information on vital statistics has been enriched. But a few years ago, the valuable work entitled System and Tables of Life Assurance, prepared and compiled under the superintendence of Mr. Levi Meech, was published, and the equally interesting, though perhaps less important, Experience of the Connecticut Mutual Insurance Company followed shortly after, in 1883. Other publications of a similar character have been circulated since that time, including the Experience of the Provident Life and Trust Company of Philadelphia, reviewed by Mr. Sprague (J.I.A., xxvi, 316); and the list has received its latest addition in the instructive volume whose title appears at the head of this article.

In the article “Mortality”, in the Penny Cyclopæia, the late Professor De Morgan gave the following description of the law of mortality propounded by Gompertz in the paper presented to the Royal Society in 1825. “As this ingenious paper”, says De Morgan, “contains a deduction from a principle of high “probability, and terminates in a conclusion which accords in a “great degree with observed facts, it must always be considered “a very remarkable page in the history of the enquiry before “us…. There is in the human constitution a power of “resisting the effects of disease which increases from birth up to “a certain age, and diminishes from that time forwards.… “Mr. Gompertz assumes that the power to oppose destruction “loses equal proportions in equal times, &c, &c.” Gompertz's theory of mortality, then, is based upon the supposed physiological fact that the living human organism is endowed with a certain recuperative power, becoming (after a few years from birth) ever less and less efficient with the lapse of time, which he terms “the power to oppose destruction”, but which, for brevity, I will call “vital force”, the truth of which supposition is evidently a question for common observation.