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crepancy is merely apparent, for it does not exist in
the averages of several years.
The 2,883 deaths in the City were distributed as
follows:—1,115 occurred in the Western Union,
703 in the Eastern, and 1,065 in the Central. These
numbers are in the proportion of 25 per 1,000 of
the inhabitants of the first-named district, 24 per
1,000 of the second, and nearly 19 of the third;—
the general total being about 22 per 1,000 of the
entire population. This, as I have already said
is a great reduction of the average death-rate; for
in the course of the last nine years the annual
mortality has been at the rate 24 per 1,000, instead
of 22,—a reduction which has been general throughout
all the City districts. This saving of human
life, and with it the mitigation of the many miseries
which a high mortality indicates, is the result of
your sanitary labours; it is, to use the words of my
predecessor, the fruitage of that stately tree which
was planted in the City ten years ago; and, although
in the course of the last quarter the fruit seemed to
be barren of seed, yet the successive harvests of a
longer period, have been sufficiently abundant to
give us hope for the future, and to indicate the
necessity for a still larger exercise of those sanitary
labours which have been so prolific in the
past.