WORLD- ORE A TIONS. 70 1 



increase may be approximated is exhibited by the London tables, 

 according to which the estimated population of that city on April 2, 

 1871, was 3,247,631 ; while the decennial census completed on the same 

 night gave the number of the inhabitants as 3,251,80-1 a difference of 

 only about four thousand in three and a quarter millions one almost 

 inappreciable in the calculation of percentages. 



To the casual thinker, statistics of marriage might seem of little 

 consequence. But, in fact, the deductions from a review of marriage- 

 returns are of positive value not only to the moral philosopher, but 

 to the political economist as well. The relations of marriage to vari- 

 ous industries to mining, agriculture, trade, commerce in a word, 

 to the material prosperity of a people have been well established by 

 statistics. A decided diminution in the marriage-rate of a community 

 within a given period of time is an unerring indication that war or 

 pestilence, or commei*cial crisis, or other great disturbing force, has 

 rendered the necessaries of life clear, and occupation difficult to pro- 

 cure. The various forms of marriage the numbers of bachelors, 

 widowers, spinsters, and widows, united in wedlock ; the tendency to 

 early or late marriages among certain classes and peoples ; the con- 

 dition of elementary education as indicated by the proportion of men 

 and women capable of signing their names to marriage-documents ; 

 the effect of a demand for skilled labor upon the proportion of early 

 marriages ; the relations between waste of life and proportions of 

 marriages and births in towns as contrasted with rural districts ; the 

 influence of the marriage-rate on morality ; the ratio of marriages to 

 births, and its conformity to density and character of population, and 

 to industrial pursuits all of these considerations furnish assuredly 

 social problems of deep and constantly - increasing importance to 

 civilization. 



WOELD-CEEATIONS. 



By C. C. MEEEIMAN. 



THE New-World pioneers of the sixteenth century, when they 

 first looked on the sea-worn shores and giant forests of New 

 England, had in reality no compelling reason for believing in the 

 veritable old age of this new-found land. They had no " first order 

 of proof" that the shores were not recently upheaved there for them 

 to land upon, and with the growth of the centuries on them for the 

 trial of the manhood that was soon to reclaim them. But I think 

 those sturdy adventurers, if they stopped at all to consider of scien- 

 tific doubts, were not long in deciding that the scene before them was 

 conformable to the laws and processes of Nature, and therefore must 

 have been the slow growth of time. 



