that marriage is less common now than formerly, but that is not the case. There has been little or no change in the marriage rate or in the proportion of people married in the course of the past fifty years. Curves are here drawn from the report of the English registrar general for births, marriages and deaths.
These curves exhibit the remarkable decline in the birth rate and in the death rate. If they should continue in their present course there would be neither births nor deaths in England seventy-five years hence. As a matter of fact, the death rate can not decrease much farther. The very low figure of 13.5 deaths for each thousand of the population is due not only to improved conditions and a great decrease in the deaths of children and of those under forty which can be maintained and increased, but also to the fact that a birth rate declining in the course of a single generation from 36 to 24 has given a population containing a comparatively small percentage of old people and of young children among whom deaths are most common. What will happen to the birth rate, no one can foretell. In France the births have fallen below the deaths, and this may happen in England and in Germany.
Unlike the birth rate and the death rate, the marriage rate has not altered appreciably in the course of the past forty years. It was, it is true, somewhat higher in the early seventies, but it was only 16 in the early sixties. The variation from year to year is caused by economic and social conditions, so that the marriage rate has been called the barometer of the prosperity of a nation. The lowest marriage rate in England was 14.2 in 1886; it increased to 16.5 in 1899 and has since declined to 15. The constitution of the English population is favorable to a low death rate, but to a high birth rate and a high marriage rate. Among each million of the population there were in 1901 in England 257,525 between the ages of 20 and 34; in Germany, 239,-
857; in France, 233,548; in Sweden, 210,773. Most marriages occur between these ages and nearly all children are born when the mother is between these ages. The excess of people of these ages in Great Britain would account for an excess of marriages and births of 10 per cent, over France and 20 per cent, over Sweden. As the English population becomes stationary we may expect a decrease in marriages and births to that extent.
In Germany as in England the marriage rate is now about the same as it was thirty years ago. It has increased somewhat in France. The percentages of women between 15 and 49 years old who were married in 1901 was: In France, 57.7; in Italy, 56.1; in the German empire, 52.8, and in England, 49.2. In the course of twenty years there was an increase in France and Italy, a stationary condition in Germany and a decrease in England. In France, where the children are the fewest, the proportion of married women is the greatest as is also the number of unlegitimized unions. The decreasing birth rate is not caused by a decreasing marriage rate. It appears that it is due to the fact that people now marry with the intention of having no children or no more children than is convenient.
SCIENTIFIC ITEMS
We record with regret the death of Dr. William Hallock, professor of physics in Columbia University, and of Dr. William McMurtrie, one of the leading industrial chemists of New York City.
The Paris Academy of Sciences has elected Professor W. M. Davis, of Harvard University, a correspondent in the Section of Geography and Navigation, in the place of the late Sir George Darwin.—The mathematical works of the late Henri Poincaré are to be published by the firm of Gauthier-Villars, under the auspices of the minister of public instruction and the Paris Academy of Sciences.
