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It will be seen that in most districts in each of the three years under
review, a very large proportion of the population was left unprotected from
small-pox, but the most noticeable feature of these diagrams is that small-pox
usually prevailed to a greater extent in the districts of those circles in which
the degree of protection was least, viz., in the Metropolitan, Behar, and Orissa
Circles—a fact which does not reflect credit on the vaccination administration
of those circles. In Behar there is some excuse for deficient work, as vaccin-
ation has only recently been introduced in that circle, some districts of which
have not yet been taken up by the Vaccination Department ; but the same reason
does not exist in the Metropolitan and Orissa Circles, especially in the Metro-
politan Circle, in which there is no excuse for the inadequate degree of protection
afforded to the people. The small number of vaccinations performed in the
province as a whole is attributed by the Superintendents of Vaccination to
various causes, principally to the difficulty experienced by licensed vaccinators
in realizing their fees from the people, and to paucity of subjects for operations.
The latter cause might have been operative in a few local areas, but cannot be
accepted as a valid excuse for deficient work in all those places which are back-
ward in this respect; for, at the rate of 40 per mille, the approximate correct
birth-rate of India, the total average number of children born during the three
years 1887—90 in the entire area brought under the operation of the Vaccin-
ation Department in Bengal numbered about 2,373,204, and deducting from
these the total average number of deaths among infants under one year
(238,244), the total average number available for vaccination each year was
2,134,960. But of these an average of 266,100, or 124.63 per mille (12.46 per
cent.) only, an extremely inadequate proportion, were so protected.

The following tables show in order of sequence the degree of protection
afforded to infants in each district of the province in each of the three years
1887-88, 1888-89, and 1889-90: —

                                                                                                   1887-88.