portion as representatives to the general court. Provision for submitting the amendments to the people and ascertaining their decision, and declaring and publishing it will be made by the convention.

Fire Insurance. - The Commissioner makes his eighteenth annual report, covering the business of 1886, in which he says that the fire-insurance companies organized under the laws of New Hampshire, number eight stock companies, seventeen State companies, and twenty-one town companies. This constitutes the legitimate fire-insurance force in the State; the outside companies, heretofore licensed, baving ceased active operations in this State. The home fire companies assumed risks in this State, in 1886, as follows: Stock companies, $31,936,240; State mutual companies, $15,530,194; town mutual companies, $2,609,924; total, $50,076,358. The Governor, in his message to the Legislature, June 1, 1887, said: "As a consequence of the insurance laws enacted by the last Legislature, fifty-eight foreign fire-insurance companies combined and simultaneously withdrew their agencies from the State, refusing to continue to insure New Hampshire property under those laws. This concerted and organized movement of the withdrawing companies justified the charge that it was a deliberate attempt at coercion, by discrediting the laws to make them obnoxious to the people, the understood object being not only to compel a repeal of the laws, but also to intimidate other States from legislating in the same direction. While they had an undoubted right to refuse New Hampshire risks, each company acting in its own capacity and independently of other companies, in banding together and agreeing to act in concert to punish and distress the property and business interests of the State, their course was justly open to censure. It was in effect a strike and a boycott in the accepted meaning of these terms."

The total losses paid by home companies in 1886 was $112,030; by retired companies, $155,487; by manufacturers' mutuals, $388; by outside agency companies, $12,560; total, $280,465.

Life Insurance.-The summary of business for 1886 is as follows: Number of policies issued, 3,341; amount insured, $4,534,356; policies in force, December 31, 7,605: amount insured, $12,694,803; premiums received in 1886, $379,037.55; death losses and other claims paid, $306,263.29.

Savings Banks. Here with is a condensed statement of savings-banks at time of examinations in 1886 and 1887:

Railroads.-The forty-third annual report of the Board of Railroad Commissioners furnishes the following information of the roads in the State: Their value, which depends upon their capacity to earn dividends, as represented by the market value of their securities, is greater than ever, and their physical condition is better. Their rolling-stock has been greatly increased, and is more serviceable. They are doing more business, are operated with greater regularity, speed, and safety, and with more regard to the convenience of the public. The cost of constructing and furnishing these several roads, to the time they may be said to have been finished, is estimated at about $35,000,000. Of this amount about $9,000,000 has never paid any dividends, and is irrecoverably lost. The capital stock of all corporations reporting is $45,691,742.74; funded debt, $25,075,100; floating indebtedness, $8,261,882.10; total liabilities, $79,028,724.84. Total standard-gauge mileage in the State, with branches, 1,041; double track, 66 miles; sidings, 197 miles; total, 1,304 miles.

The taxable property of the State for the present year has been reduced for taxation fifteen per cent. less than its actual value. The valuation of railroads, telegraphs, and telephones, was reduced in like proportion, deducting amounts taxed in and paid to towns. The amount thus obtained is assessed at the rate of other property throughout the State$1.38 on each $100 of valuation.

The Nashua street-railway was opened for business in the spring of 1886, and its business covers six months in its report. The road is two miles long. An extension of the Manchester street road from Elm Street to Hallsville, a mile, was opened in the autumn of 1885. The earnings of the Manchester, Concord, Dover, (nine months), and Laconia and Lake Village roads in 1885, were $47,801.24, and the operating expenses for the same period was $42,208.28, leaving a net income of $5,593.96. In 1886 the earnings were $62,450.13; expenses, $57,964.68; net income, $4,485.45. These roads in 1885 carried 881,600 passengers, and in 1886 carried 1,105,888.

Board of Health.-The annual reports of the State Board of Health are prepared primarily for the education of the people of the State upon sanitary topics. The most noticeable in. dications of progress appear in the abandoning of polluted wells for water-supply in villages, and the introduction of an abundance of wholesome water; the sewering of places that had no system of drainage; the demand for local boards of health that will accomplish something; the construction of public buildings upon a thorough sanitary basis; the introduction of hygienic instruction in the public schools; a better knowledge of prevention of zymotic diseases; a more rational view of avoidance of contagious diseases among children, etc. The board has accomplished much in efforts to secure better water for drinking and household

purposes. Public water-supplies, from sources of undoubted wholesomeness, have been constructed in many of the larger towns. Much attention has been given to the causes leading to diphtheria and typhoid fever, and their removal; the consideration of influences affecting the quality of milk, from a sanitary standpoint; the sanitary survey of school-houses, and air-supplies; and the disposal of waste matter. The Legislature of 1887 enacted laws in relation to the extirpation of pleuro-pneumonia, and other contagious diseases, and the publication of local vital statistics.

Vital Statistics.-The sixth annual reports of registration of vital statistics comprise returns to Dec. 31, 1885. The marriage-rate in the State for 1885, was 916; birth-rate, 18-21; death-rate, 17-87. The marriage-rate appears highest in Hillsborough, Strafford, Rockingham, Carroll, and Coos Counties, in order. The highest birth-rate given is from those counties relatively having the largest number of the laboring-classes. Hillsborough County, with its large number of factory operatives, gives 25.8 per 1,000; Coös, with a large number of lumbermen, foreigners, 24-86; Cheshire, 17-78; Strafford, 17:46. There are reported, for 1885, 6,319 births. There were 56 twin births. In 26 marriages the brides were under fifteen years of age; in 156 cases the man was between fifteen and twenty, and the woman the same in 792 cases; 36 men and 7 women were between seventy and eighty, and 2 men were over eighty. In 459 instances the bride was older than the groom; 553 were widowers, and 419 widows. To the fourth marriage were 3 men and 4 women, and 1 man to the fifth marriage. The oldest couple were eighty-two and seventy-two, and the youngest sixteen and fourteen. The 291 divorces granted were for the following causes: abandonment, 83; adultery, 62; three years' absence, 19; extreme cruelty, 85; habitual drunkenness, 34; treatment injurious to health, 4; impotency, 2; conviction of crime and imprisonment, 2. Of the libellants, 94 were men, and 197 women. Consumption caused more deaths than any single disease-857; 373 males, and 480 females; 4 sex not stated. Other causes of death were: pneumonia, 244 males, 259 females; apoplexy and paralysis, 234 males, 256 females; heart-disease, 241 males, 233 females; old age, 179 males, 240 females; cholera infantum, 110 males, 109 females; cancer, 74 males, 139 females; typhoid fever, 67 males, 74 females; meningitis, 70 males, 64 females; Bright's disease, 70 males, 42 females; braindiseases, 51 males, 58 females; bronchitis, 41 males, 67 females; debility, 55 males, 52 females; diarrhoea and dysentery, 46 males, 54 females; dropsy, 39 males, 52 females, diphtheria, 37 males, 41 females; convulsions, 31 males, 43 females; croup, 42 males, 31 females; liver-diseases, 32 males, 30 females, scarlatina, 22 males, 31 females.

Fish and Game.-The variety of fish chiefly

distributed in 1886 was brook-trout and landlocked salmon. Experience and observation have taught the commissioners that these varieties are the best for the waters of New Hampshire. The work of the commission for the past years has produced favorable and encouraging results in fish-culture, and in restocking the varied waters of the State. The number of brook-trout distributed the past year was over 600,000. Hebron river, a tributary to Newfound lake, is reputed to contain the finest spawning-grounds in the State for the landlocked salmon. The Plymouth and Sunapee hatcheries furnished for distribution in the State 1,300,000 young fish and eggs. Among the different kinds of fish planted for development are the brown trout, rainbow trout, LochLevan trout, known as the finest of European species. They were planted in Sunapee lake. The new trout, previously mentioned as inhabiting Sunapee, pronounced to be a variety of the Oquassa type, and believed to be a native of this lake, still excites much interest to sportsmen and fish scientists. Good has been accomplished by the enforceinent of the game laws, as seen by the increase of deer in the northern portions of the State, where none have been seen for years. These laws have apparently put an end to much of the illegal snaring of the partridge. More than 325 fish and game wardens have been qualified.

Charities. The State supports and educates its deaf, dumb, and blind in institutions outside of her limits; for its deaf and dumb, $3,997.45; blind, $3,600; idiotic and feeble-minded youth, $258.28; indigent insane at asylum, $6,000; convict insane, $2,962.10; asylum library, $100; Deaf-Mute Mission, $150; total, $11,326.11.

Industrial School.-The number in the school during the year was 150; discharged at expiration of sentence, 14; on probation, 11; honorably discharged, 7; in school, April 1, 1887, 119. Parentage: American, 73; Irish, 42; French, 23; 12 of other nationalities. These are instructed in reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, history, physiology, and philosophy. The State pays $6,000 for the school's support.

State Prison. The number of convicts was 121; 118 males and 3 females. The earnings for the year were $16,508.17; expenses, $20,024.85; balance against the institution, $3,516.68. Commitments for seventeen years have averaged six per cent. ; for the last year but four per cent.-a decrease commendable to the State.

Asylum for the Insane. This has continued self-supporting. The debt of $20,000 incurred in the erection of the Bancroft building has been reduced to $11,000. The past year began with 317 patients; 136 men and 181 women. Admitted during the year 143-83 men and 60 women. Whole number during the year, 471226 men and 245 women. Discharged, 9554 men and 41 women. Daily average for the year, 321-137 men and 184 women. Of the

328 patients remaining at the end of the year, only 24 had prospects of cure. There were 33 deaths during the year. A winter workshop for the patients is in operation, with a promise of good results. This is the first attempt at developing skilled labor among the patients of this institution, and the selection of the kind of labor to be done was experimental. The upholstering of mattresses, the manufacture of brooms, the reseating of chairs, tailoring, etc., were the most practical forms of industry. Twelve acres of land have been purchased on the shore of Lake Penacook, four miles distant from the asylum, where it is proposed to erect a summer cottage for such patients as are in condition to be benefited thereby. During the summer camping-parties of men visited the place twice a week. An open field furnished a play-ground. The men were permitted to walk to these grounds, cook their meals, fish, play ball, lounge, or indulge in other amusements, and return at night. Women were conveyed there in barges to spend the day.

Education. By the report of the Superintendent of Instruction it appears that the number of school districts, under the law of 1885, by system of town schools, has been reduced from 1,890 to 275, and that the number of districts organized under special acts is forty-six-six less than the previous year. The schools numbering twelve pupils or less have decreased from 838 to 640, and those numbering six or less from 359 to 166. Thus 494 small schools have been discontinued, which represented chiefly a wasteful expenditure of money under the old system. By the new system the average length of schools in the State has been 22:39 weeks, against 20-37 weeks last year. This becomes more markedly noticeable from the expenditure of $454,373.92 for teachers under the old law, against $444,095.58 under the new law. The number of enrolled pupils the past year is 59,690, a decrease of 4,529, a result arising from more accurate returns, and the opening of parochial schools. The care of the schools has required 679 fewer teachers than by the old method. The wages of male teachers has averaged $41.03, against $40.22 last year. For female teachers, the average has been $24.46 a month, as per $23.56 the previous year. More normal-school teachers were employed last year than before.

A year of more than usual prosperity in the Normal School is reported. The demand for teachers that have had some special preparation for their profession is increasing. There has been an attendance in the several departments as follows: Normal department-graduates, 22; number of different pupils, 63; training department-high-school, 44; grammar-school, 41; intermediate school, 58; primary school, 50 total, 193.

NEW HEBRIDES, a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean. They are 30 in number, extending 400 miles from north to south, and have a population of between 100,000 and

150,000 persons. Scotch Presbyterian missionaries have made some progress in Christianizing the natives. Laborers have been recruited on the islands both for the Australian colonies and the French colony of New Hebrides. Traffic with the natives has been mainly carried on by English traders, while Frenchmen have established plantations on the islands in recent years. Since 1882 the English interests in the islands have been transferred to French colonists, who have purchased 700,000 acres from the former English proprietors, and nearly 1,000,000 acres more from native chiefs. The cultivation of these lands has been carried on to some extent by the labor of the islanders. The French corporation, called the New Hebrides Company, has attempted more recently to introduce agricultural colonists from France. Several parties were taken out and were set to work on railroads leading to the lands that were to be conceded to them. The majority fell sick from the effects of the climate, many died, most of those who survived returned to Noumea, and those who had the means went back to France. The colonists were workmen and peasants who were sent out with their wives and families by the Colonization Society, which has furnished settlers of the same class for New Caledonia and other French islands.

In 1878, when the Australian press was urging the annexation of the New Hebrides by Great Britain, the French ambassador at London wrote to Lord Derby, saying that, as his Government had no intentions with regard to the group, it would like to have the matter set at rest by a like declaration of the British Government. The British Government answered that it had no intention of interfering with the independence of the islands. This agreement was a renewal of an understanding that was come to between the two governments as early as 1840, and took the form of definite promises in 1858. In 1883 the question of annexation was again agitated in Australia, and the French Government sent a communication asking whether the declarations of 1878 were still adhered to on the part of the English Government, as they were on its own part, because otherwise it would be compelled to insist on the maintenance of the existing state of affairs. Lord Granville, who was then Foreign Minister, replied in a dispatch to Lord Lyons, the British ambassador at Paris, that the agreement of 1878 was considered perfectly valid. A note verbale to that effect was handed in at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Lord Derby had assured the Australian colonies that no proposition for the annexation of the New Hebrides by a foreign power would be entertained without consulting the colonies and securing arrangements satisfactory to them. In January, 1886, the French Government offered to relinquish the deportation of relapsed criminals to the Pacific if it were allowed to annex the New Hebrides. Lord Rosebery communicated the proposition

to the Colonial Office, which laid it before the governments of the Australian colonies. They refused to accede to such an arrangement.

The French Occupation.-In 1885 the natives had attacked French plantations in the New Hebrides, and killed and wounded several persons. On June 1, 1886, a French naval vessel that had been sent by the authorities at Noumea without the knowledge of the Government at Paris, arrived at Havanna Harbor, in the island of Exate, and landed 100 French marines, who established there a military post, and raised the French flag. Immediately afterward another force took possession of Port Sandwich, and established there a similar post. The occupation of the islands by France excited the indignation and anger of the Australians, who were already greatly stirred up over the French recidivist law. The aim of French legislators in regard to their penal settlement in the Pacific was not simply to rid France of habitual malefactors, but, by removing criminals from the associations and conditions which prevented even those who desired to live an honest life from reforming, to give them every opportunity and incentive to become prosperous agriculturists. Quite as baseless as the expectations of the French reformers was the anxiety and dread produced in Australia by the humanitarian legislation of the French Parliament. There have been rare instances of convicts from New Caledonia escaping in open boats, crossing the 700 miles of intervening ocean, and landing on the coast of Queensland. After performing such a feat of daring and endurance, they have sometimes been succored and concealed from the authorities by Queenslanders who admired their courage and pitied their sufferings. Thus a few transported felons have escaped into Australia. The military occupation of the New Hebrides by the French was interpreted in only one way by the Australians, whose minds were filled with the dread of an influx of French criminals kept up by the factitious agitation of the recidivist question. They supposed that, since the land available for reformed criminal settlements in New Caledonia was now occupied, the French Government intended to extend these settlements to the New Hebrides. Such a project was, in fact, entertained by a benevolent society in France. The Imperial Government had declined to annex the various unoccupied islands of the Pacific when urged to do so by the Australian. Recently it had been impelled by the exigencies of European politics to acquiesce in the occupation of the northern coast of Papua by the Germans. Similar motives might now induce it to assent to the French annexation of the New Hebrides, if it had not done so already. The colonial conference that, was held in London in the spring of 1887, had two animated debates over the New Hebrides question, in which the feelings of the Australian colonists were so vigorously expressed that the Government omitted this

part of the proceedings in the Blue Book containing the minutes of the conference.

The French ministers, in effect, perceiving the awkward situation in which the British Government was placed by the action of the French colonial authorities, which was at first discountenanced, but on inquiry was justified, by the Government at Paris, determined to use the New Hebrides question as a means of obtaining a favorable settlement of the Egyptian question. The French had gone tot he New Hebrides to protect the lives and property of colonists. They remained there in violation of their pledges, as the English had in Egypt, and replied to the representations of the British Foreign Office with the same sort of explanations and assurances that they were used to receiving from London with regard to the British occupation of the Nile valley. M. Flourens assured the English ambassador, after the French military had been quartered in substantial barracks for nearly a year at the ports of the New Hebrides, that France had no intention of permanently occupying the islands, and no definitive character ought to be attributed to her action. As soon as satisfactory arrangements could be made for policing the islands so that Europeans would be preserved from outrage, he promised that the French troops should be withdrawn. Soon after the French force landed, the British Government sent a naval vessel to the New Hebrides. The English Cabinet, as soon as the French position was explained through diplomatic channels, proposed a system of joint naval protection. To this the French Government replied with a counter-proposal, which was declined on Nov. 26, 1886. The French Government insisted that the negotiations in regard to the New Hebrides and those relating to the neutralization of the Suez Canal should proceed pari passu. When asked to name a date for the evacuation of the New Hebrides, M. Flourens replied that he could not give a precise answer so long as England did not make known her intentions regarding Egypt and the Suez Canal. The subject was treated by the French Cabinet in connection with other territorial questions in regard to Pacific islands, and was not finally settled till October, 1887, when the British Government agreed also to the Suez Canal convention.

The New Hebrides Convention.-The convention that was concluded between the British and the French government contains five articles. A joint naval control of the islands was agreed on, and a date was fixed for the withdrawal of the French troops. The English Government agreed to abrogate the treaty made in 1847 between Lord Palmerston and the Comte de Jarnac regarding the neutrality of the Leeward Islands, and allow the French to extend the Tahiti protectorate to the islands of Huahine, Raiatea, and Borabara, and the small islands adjacent thereto. This concession was embodied in the Newfoundland fisheries conven