3IO 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



lished the first volume of an iuqiortaiit 

 woiTv on mathematical optics. He has 

 also been trained as a lawyer and has 

 broad interests in philosophy and edu- 

 cation. 



It is a fact of some interest that 

 Mr. Lowell is a member of the corpora- 

 tion of the institute and with Dr. 

 Pritchett represented the institute in 

 the joint committee of the corporations 

 which recommended the merger with 

 Harvard. The most important action 

 of Harvard since the election of Mr. 

 Lowell has been the calling of two 

 heads of departments of the institute, 

 Professor Swain and Professor Clifi'onl, 

 to its Graduate School of Applied 

 Sciences. 



ENGLISH VITAL STATISTICS 



The recently published report of the 

 English registrar general shows that 

 the death rate of England and Wales 

 during 1907 reached the remarkably 

 low figure of 15 per thousand of the 

 population. This is 2.4 per thousand 

 lower than it was ten years ago; it is 

 lower than for any other nation, except 

 perhaps Sweden and Norway, though 

 the lowest recorded death rates appear 

 to be in Indiana and Michigan, where 

 in 1905 they were 12.8 and 13.5, re- 

 spectively. There is nothing more 

 appalling than, and at the same time 

 so hopeful as, the great differences in 

 the death rates in different parts of the 

 civilized world. It seems almost in- 

 credible that in one country or in one 

 city twice as many people of each 

 thousand inhabitants die as in others. 

 We may sympathize with Tolstoy in 

 his grief for the cruel executions that 

 occur in Russia, but they are after all 

 an insignificant matter compared with 

 the fifty million people who have died 

 needlessly in that country in the course 

 of the past twenty-five years. But we 

 need not go to Russia for a warning, 

 when the death rate in New York is 

 twenty per cent, higher than in Lon- 

 don, when ten times as many in pro- 



portion to the population die from 

 typhoid fever in Pittsburg as m New 

 York, or when the death rate in one 

 Massachusetts town is twice as high 

 as in another. 



It is gratifying that the infant mor- 

 tality in England in 1907 was as low 

 as 118 per 1,000 births, as compared 

 with an average of 145 in the ten pre- 

 ceding years. But it is an ominous 

 fact that the birth rate has fallen even 

 more rapidly than the death rate. The 

 birth rate in 1907 in England and 

 Wales was 26.3, as much as 0.8 lower 

 than in the preceding year and 10 lower 

 than in 1876. If this fall should con- 

 tinue there would be no children born 

 in England at the close of the present 

 century. Absurd as this may appear, 

 it is difficult to see why if the average 

 family has decreased from four to three 

 in the course of thirty years, it may 

 not continue to decrease to two and to 

 one. 



On the other hand, the death rate 

 can not continue to decrease indefi- 

 nitely, and indeed it seems to have 

 almost reached its minimum. When 

 one thinks of the vast amount of in- 

 temperance, poverty and preventable 

 disease in England, it might appear 

 that there is room lor endless improve- 

 ment. But even a death rate of 15 is 

 paradoxical. This means that only one 

 person in 66.6 dies each year, and if 

 the population were stationary the av- 

 erage duration of life would be 66.6 

 years. As one infant in seven dies, the 

 average age at death of those who sur- 

 vive the first year would be 77, which 

 obviously it is not, nor is likely to be. 

 The paradox is explained by another 

 paradox, namely, that a high birth 

 rate tends to give a low death rate. 

 Countries, cities and classes having a 

 high birth rate usually liave a high 

 death rate and the infant death rate 

 is nearly ten times the average; yet it 

 is the high birth rate in England in 

 past years which gives it its present 

 low death rate. 



If the birth rate of a courtry should 



