This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
70
MODERN HYDERABAD.

every 10,000 of the population than there were thirty years ago.

The new Census contains much interesting information concerning the birth rate. There is no excess, it says, of male births but more male than female infants die during the first year of their lives. After the fifth year is passed, the male population is in excess of the female, and women then remain in a position of numerical inferiority until the end. That the women do not live as long as the men in Hyderabad State is proved by the statistics ; but it is difficult to obtain the correct ages of the women. "Every woman," says the Census, "who can possibly do so seems to have a fancy for returning herself as between twenty and twenty-five years of age." Early marriages are given as one cause of the higher mortality of females than males, and the fact that there are at the present time in the State 24,006 married females and 6,792 widows under ten years of age, and 27,913 married and 1,258 widows under five years of age, gives support to this statement, although, no doubt, in most cases the marriages are mere betrothals.

The hard manual labour done by Hindu women of the lower classes has probably