In the consideration of heart disease, which in one form or another is responsible for approximately one fifth of the adult deaths in the United States, it is important that data be obtained from different sections of the country for study and comparison, because it is conceivable that climatic, racial and perhaps other differences in widely separated portions of the United States might considerably vary the incidence of some of the causal agencies in heart disease, and therefore heart disease itself. Faulkner and White1showed that acute rheumatic fever was decidedly less frequent in mild and warm climates than in those in which damp and cold prevailed, and Harrison and Levine2have pointed out the rarity of rheumatic heart disease in the southern part of this country. Wood, Jones and Kimbrough,3in a series of 623 cases of heart disease, about equally divided between Massachusetts and Virginia,