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tables also give male and female experience separately, as do the English Life Tables and the 3o American Offices' Table.

A new investigation of the combined experiences of the American companies has recently- been set on foot. It aims to develop the special mortality rates, as influenced by certain features of personal or family history, personal condition when accepted, residence, occupation, etc.

The introduction of the Actuaries' or 17 Offices Table as the standard of waluation in the State of Massachusetts was not regarded by Commissioner Wright as final. He expected and desired that a new standard be adopted when the actual experience of American companies was compiled. Accordingly, he printed in the reports of that department for several years tables showing the actual mortality of companies reporting to that department, compared with the expected by the Actuaries' Table, and showed that the actual experience was much more favorable than the table. Concerning this he remarked, in his last report, 1865: "Of course this favorable difference of experience cannot be permanently held by companies whose business is chiefly life policies; for, if the death rate is slower on the earlier ages, it must be faster on the latter, the limit of human life being pretty certainly- fixed."

Population statistics do not bear out Mr. Wright's generalization, and there is reason to believe that the same influences which make mortality lower at earlier ages work in a diminishing but always sensible degree to extend also the ultimate limit of life. But his conclusions do agree remarkably- well with the experience as to in-