911/2 ----
5. Copying statistical tables into book 5 ----
Transcripts of miscellaneous entries,
lists of vicars, &c. &c. 7 ----
______
Total 1951/4 hours.

My registers begin in the year 1558, and the present population of the
parish is about 420, so that you have here an account of the labour
necessary to complete an alphabetical transcript of the register of a rural
parish of that extent in population.

I send you the result as a first step to a work of great national
importance, and of inestimable value with relation to family descent, title
to property long in abeyance, &c. &c. As to statistics, I doubt whether any
data worthy of consideration can be obtained from these sources, owing to
the constant irregularities which occur in keeping the registers.

No man, much less the minister of a parish, who has abundant calls upon his
time, can be expected to sit down to the task of transcribing his registers
through many _consecutive_ hours; but there are few who could not give
occasionally one or two hours to the work. In this way I effected my
transcripts; the work of 195 hours being distributed through nearly five
months--no great labour after all.

On an average, twelve words, with the figures, may be calculated for each
entry, which will give for this parish about 500 folios. Each entry having
been transcribed twice, we may call it, at a rough calculation, 1000 folios
written out ready for printing.

If the authorities at the Registrar-General's office would give their
attention to it, they must have _there_ abundant data on which to form
calculations as to the probable cost of the undertaking And I cannot help
thinking that, setting aside printing as an after consideration,
alphabetical transcripts, at least, might be obtained of all the parochial
registers in the kingdom, and deposited in that office, at no
insurmountable expense; and if the cost appear too heavy, the
accomplishment of the work might be distributed through a given number of
years; say ten, or even twenty.

Parliament might, perhaps, be induced to vote an annual grant for so
important a work till it was accomplished; albeit, when we think of their
niggardly denial of any thing to the printing, or{3} even the conservation
of the public records, sanguine hopes from that quarter can hardly be
indulged.

To insure correctness, without which the