THE retiring president of the Royal Statistical Society, Prof. Major Greenwood, took for the subject of his valedictory address, read on June 16, “English Death Rates, Past, Present and Future”. Prof. Greenwood pointed out that down to the beginning of the twentieth century, there was no improvement in mortality at the beginning of life and little improvement in old age, but that since the turn of the century there had been great improvement in the mortality of little children and some improvement in old age. From the beginning of registration, rates of mortality at ages between early childhood and old age improved, but the improvement began in time with the earlier ages and seemed to pass like a wave down the ages. In the opinion of some students, this wave-like movement was determined by the course of social reform, first directed to the protection of the young and only later to that of adults; Farr attributed the slow improvement of the rates of mortality in his time to the growth of towns; in his view, the general social and hygienic reforms of his time were offset by the disadvantages of density of population. Modern students, notably Kermack, McKendrick and McKinlay, have objected that the wave of improvement is too regular to be explained in these ways and suggested that the prime factor regulating mortality rates is the environment of childhood. Prof. Greenwood concludes that, even if this hypothesis does not completely explain the whole movement, it furnishes an important element of truth, so that contemporary emphasis upon the paramount importance of caring for the young is properly placed. This does not, of course, lead to the pessimistic conclusion that measures directed to the improvement of the conditions of life of adults are useless; there is much evidence that they are of value. Thus, the problem of cancer is not one which the general statistician can view with much pleasure, “but a perusal of clinical records and of the last report of the Director of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund gives some grounds for optimism”.