Many papers are to be found in the literature dealing with problems of malignant tumor of the colon. A vast amount of material has accumulated on all phases of the subject, especially in the hospital records pertaining to mortality, morbidity and treatment. It occurred to me that it would be interesting to take a group of cases in which autopsy had been performed for study of the nature of the lesion at the time, making an effort to analyze some of the difficulties that hedge about clinical recognition of the disorder. All of the patients reported on in this review came to necropsy in the department of pathology at the University of Minnesota between January 1910 and July 1937 because of carcinoma of the large bowel. That this material represents a fair sample of the general population is attested by the fact that in 1927 it was found that 19