Definition of "census"

In what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind are included ...

1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 7, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley

Each page of the schedule was crossruled with 8 lines, capable of censussing 8 individuals.

1893, Census of India, 1891, volume 23, page 347

Indeed, none of the recorded characteristics of buildings nor their location affected our counts of breeding Sparrows, which appeared to be distributed rather homogeneously across the urban areas we censused.

2008, Pierandrea Brichetti et al., “Recent declines in urban Italian Sparrow Passer (domesticus) italiae populations in northern Italy”, in Ibis, page 179, column 2

My initiation to waterfowl censussing took place in the early days of the A.W.E., as it is familiarly known, when I served as a junior to one of the ablest of the Witwatersrand pioneers, Royce Reed. The method used must remain one of the three basic methods of Transvaal waterfowl censussing, although it has certain inherent limitations.

1965, Fauna & Flora, page 46

For 14 individuals, eight censusses per daily period were performed within two weeks (32 censusses per individual), each time recording the coordinates of location. The territories of the individuals were defined as the area defended successfully against conspecifics by agonistic and/or non-agonistic behaviour, as described by Wickler (1969) and Nelissen (1976). The locations of the territories were determined from censussing; their sizes were estimated by behavioural observations.

1995, Netherlands Journal of Zoology, volume 45, page 390