That leakage.

Evening Star, Issue 8553, 27 June 1891, Page 1 (Supplement)

That leakage.

The discrepancy between the estimated and actual result of the census of New Zealand has puzzled a good many, and the belief is expreesed that the methods in vogue for checking the numbers who leave the colony are imperfect. The same difficulty has been experienced in Australia. The Government statist of New South vVale* (Mr Cughlan) is tj be congratulated (sayi the ' Argus') upon being much nearer the nark in his estimate of the popnlation of the sister colony than he was expected to be. Mr Coghlan is beginning his career as ft statist, and it was to be expected that he would fall into the error, common to nnm« hers of his profession, of taking the ordinary official figures of births and deaths and of arrivals and departures as his basis, and of not allowing for the steady unseen departures that occur in all countries. Ar« rivola are accurately counted, while departures never are. There ought to have been, according to the estimates, some 1,175,000 people in New South Wales oo census day, and thsre actually were 1,153,000. Mr Oayter was 22,000 short op the Victorian estimate, and Mr Coghlan it just the same number out in New South Wales, and of both officers it might be said that they were surprisingly near the mark. The American censu3 revealed that the estimate acceptrd beforehand was nearly 3,000,000 in error.