they can be eliminated from the unclassified causes of death and placed with propriety in a more definite group. This group should be legitimately reduced by requiring more exact returns.

As to distribution, the unclassified group is largest in urban districts; the enfeebled condition of early life especially fall in the crowded parts of the city or swell the death rates of asylums for children taken from these surroundings. To an extent they are therefore preventable diseases. The districts having a large city population have a large number of unclassified deaths composed of the elements noted; they have a small number of deaths reported from and attributable to old age; the converse is true of the rural districts. During an epidemic of grippe the unclassified group is increased in all districts. This is notable on a comparison of this Bulletin with that of January, 1899, when an extensive epidemic of that disease was at its height.

While this group contains quite diverse causes of death it is a group fully distinct from all others and one well to maintain without subdivision. It is largely composed of those dying from conditions of general enfeeblement, to which alone they succumb or to the effects of exposure or other intercurrent strain, such as epidemic influenza, the stress of which on account of their impaired resistence they are unable to withstand.

[Cities are printed in SMALL CAPS, villages in italic and towns in Roman type]