Since within this colony we have had as yet no basis of experience, either in respect to numbers or time, which would enable us to form an independent estimate as to the probable results of the treatment of inebriates in special institutions, it is obviously desirable to ascertain how far the rough approximate statistics arrived at for England would form a safe guide here. The problem is analogous to the problem of adopting Home life-insurance tables to colonial conditions, the results of English experience not being directly applicable without making allowance for local divergences. The main disturbing factors are, firstly, a marked difference in the character of the populations of the two countries. We have nothing corresponding to the large profligate and drunken population of Old-World cities – no “submerged tenth” – and there is in New Zealand no lower-class labouring population which can be identified in drinking habits with that class in England. Further, the proportion of women-drunkards is much less here than at Home, and Dr. Shadwell’s statement, in his book, “Drink, Temperance, and Legislation,” that “women tend to monopolize the field of habitual inebriety among the working-classes” could not be applied here.