The influence of malaria, causing chronic change of function or structure of the internal organs (section 5), and the youthful exposure to accidents, dislocations, and fractures (section 37) in the rural districts, and which are frequently unattended by medical or surgical skill, leaving the sufferer with an unnecessary permanent deformity and disability, may to some extent account for the large ratios under these two sections.

For causes other than physical and mental disability, the rejections exhibit a still much greater proportion

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. Seventy-seven per 1,000 examined of recruits have been rejected for want of physical development, implying a deficiency of age. And the experience attained in this department tends to confirm that of others made in the field, that the minimum age is too low for recruits, and the maximum at least five years too great for drafted men, to obtain efficient and enduring soldiers. Few boys of eighteen years of age are sufficiently matured to endure fatigue, exposure, and change of living consequent to the soldier, while the age of forty with the laboring man in this climate brings many ills unknown or uncared for below this period. The former is shown in the examinations of those under twenty years of age, and the latter is manifest in the exemptions of drafted men. In the examination of 752 recruits and substitutes under twenty, and natives of Ohio, the ratio rejected per 1,000 examined amounts to 355, while 911 examined of twenty, and not exceeding forty years of age, natives of the same State, shows a ratio rejected of only 183 per 1,000 examined. In the examination of 1,396 drafted men, 138 of the number were forty and under forty-five years of age. The ratio exempted per 1,000 physically examined of those under forty is 284, and those forty sand under forty-five amounts to 369, and the greater number of the accepted, or not exempt, bearing evidence of an inferior class. As an established consequence, the greater the ratio rejected of any class, comparatively the more it increases the suspicions of the character and efficiency of those accepted.

TABLE Numbers 6.-Showing the number of natives of Ohio of less than twenty years of, age, and the number more than twenty years of age, of recruits and substitutes examined from July 4, 1864, to April 30, 1865, and the number of drafted men less than forty, and the number forty and less than forty-five years of age, physically examined, and the ratio rejected and exempted for each class.

Number Number Ratio rejected

Class. physically rejected and and exempted

examined. exempted. per 1,000

examined.

Ohio recruits

and

substitutes:

Less than 20 752 267 355.0

years.

More than 20 911 167 183.3

years.

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Total. 1,663 434 260.9

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Drafted men:

Less than 40 1,258 358 284.5

years of age.

More than 40

and less than 138 51 369.5

45.

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Total. 1,396 409 296.5