“It was not very long ago since all civilised nations accepted the figures of their birth rates as, at least, a crude test of their virility and an index to their standing in the world,” says Sir. W. Arbuthnot Lane, the famous surgeon, in the “Daily Mail.” “Even now the anxiety shown by many persons about the steady decline in our birth rate is an indication that the idea of ‘quantity’ dies hard. We are only very slowly learning that what really matters is the quality and standard of the health of the average individual. Even the death rate is a better test of a nation's well being than the birth rate, especially when it shows the number of infants saved compared with the awful mortality that prevailed a few decades ago. By these tests the Dominions of New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Canada in the order named, stand easily highest in the world. The people of the British Dominions live nearer to nature both in their work and in their food. Their high standards of social welfare are known to the world. In addition to what alert intelligence and natural fortune have brought them, they have the boldness to accept, without question, the latest teaching in matters of health. In his latest report the Director-General of Health for New Zealand proudly claims that ‘there is probably no country in the world to-day where the fundamentals of healthy growth, fresh air, sunlight, food of the right type and amount, adequate sleep and rest, wholesome exercise, are more readily available than in New Zealand.’ But he is careful to add that these benefits should be more fully utilised. School medical officers report that ‘tea, white bread and meat play the chief part of the dietary in many homes.’ ‘In New Zealand eggs, milk, cheese, butter and fresh fruit and vegetables should be available in such abundance and at low enough prices to take the place of the excessive use of meat in many households.’