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X']   DISFASE.   16.5

well understood cause of such clouds is the deflection of a wind laden with invisible vapour, by means of the sloping flanks of the mountain, up to. a level at which the atmosphere is much colder and rarer than below. Part of the invisible vapour with which the wind was charged, becomes thereby condensed into the minute particles of water of which clouds are formed. After a while the process is reversed. The particles of cloud having 'been carried by the wind across the plateau, are swept down the other side of it again to a lower level, and during their descent they return into invisible vapour. Both in the cloud and in the population, there is on the one hand a continual supply and inrush of new. individuals from the unseen ; they remain a while as visible objects, and then disappear. The cloud and the population are composed of elements that resemble each other in the brevity of their existence, while the general features of the cloud and of the population are alike in that they abide.


Preliminary Problem.-The proportion of the population that dies at each age, is well known, and the diseases of which they die are also well known, but the statistics of hereditary disease are as yet for the most part contradictory and untrustworthy.

It is most desirable as a preliminary to more minute inquiries, that the causes of death of a large number of persons should be traced during two successive generations in somewhat the same broad way that Stature and several other peculiarities were traced in the pre-