18. Lastly, we have a condition requiring that evidence that the age
is correctly stated in the declaration shall be given at some time before
payment of the claim, which has been thus expressed : — " Beasonable
proof will also be required of the date of the birth, unless that fact shall
have been previously established; in which case the same will be admit-
ted by indorsement on the policy."(y) This admission should never be
neglected, and may become extremely important, greatly increasing when
made the market value of the policy. It is notoriously true, that evi-
dence on this point is often very difficult to obtain ; as, for instance, in
the case of children which have been bom abroad, or those of dissenters,
of whose baptism no evidence is preserved; or where they have been
privately baptized, and no entry made in the parish books ; or where
the books themselves — and this is especially common in Ireland — have
been imperfectly kept. After the death of the party the proof becomes
doubly difficult. Secondary evidence, which he might have suggested,
is then lost. He may have been the last of bis family, so that even a
statuatory declaration by a person actually cognizant of the circum-
stances becomes impossible ; the admission, too, without proof, is often
rendered the more difficult by the entry of an incorrect age in the regis-
ter of burials or upon the coffin plate. When persons die at advanced
i" *7cn ^S^®> *surrounded by comparative strangers, perhaps in lodg-
*- J ings, the tendency to exaggeration common to ignorant persons
renders this error very prevalent. It often happens, too, that persons
make mistakes as to their own ages, which, on reconsideration, and after
search for evidence of the fact, they would be able to rectify. When
the mistake occurs, it is not usual for the office to declare the policy
forfeited, but to deduct from the sum assured the amount of the pre-
miums underpaid, with interest thereon, to the time of the death. This is
not, however, imperative upon the office; and it may happen that the
application of such a rule of deduction may swallow up nearly the whole
of the sum assured. 