“The Institute has now fairly started on its new career of usefulness as an incorporated society.” Usefulness, then, in the admirable words of the Council on the 5th June last, is to be the ruling principle of the Institute's new and corporate life, as few, who are acquainted with what has been done with hut small opportunity, will deny it has been of its action in the past. But for its usefulness to be thorough, the Institute must be concerned with both the theoretical and practical sides of our profession in all its branches—recollecting as well its commercial basis as its mathematical speculations, considering its connection with medical and legal specialties, collecting data, comparing methods, proving uncertainties, destroying chimæras, teaching students and testing their acquirements, not to mention accumulating a library for reference and instruction—always advancing, suggesting, restraining, reforming.

The great importance of the subject of distribution of surplus, I think, no actuary would be inclined to dispute. With regard to the magnitude of the interests involved, I will content myself with referring to Mr. Hewat's paper, read before the Actuarial Society of Edinburgh on 8 January 1880, and of which an abstract is given in the Journal (xxii, 286–292). In this paper he stated that, from the Board of Trade Returns relating to seventy-seven offices, he found that £2,285,000 was, on the average, annually divided among the policyholders by way of bonuses. Of this sum he estimated that £890,000 arose from surplus premiums or loading, and £1,040,000 from surplus interest.