On which these pearls united shine."

* * * * *


NOTES.

PARISH REGISTERS.--STATISTICS.

Among the good services rendered to the public by yourself and your
correspondents, few, I think will be found more important than that of
having drawn their attention to Mr. Wyatt Edgell's valuable suggestions on
the transcription of Parochial Registers. The supposed impracticability of
his plan has perhaps hitherto deterred those most competent to the work
from giving it the consideration which it deserves. I believe the
scheme to be perfectly practicable; and, as a first move in the work, I
send you the result of my own dealings with the registers of my parish.

It is many years since I felt the desideratum which Mr. Edgell has brought
before the public;{2} and, by way of testing the practicability of
transcribing, and printing the parochial registers of the entire kingdom in
a form convenient for reference, I made an alphabetical transcript of my
own, which is now complete. The _modus operandi_ which I adopted was
this:--1. I first transcribed, on separate slips of paper, each baptismal
entry, with its date, and a reference to the page of the register, tying up
the slips in the order in which the names were entered in the register;
noting, as I proceeded, on _another_ paper, the number of males and females
in each year.

2. The slips being thus arranged, they came in their places handy for