and the Pyrenees, in 18S5. ^J$ 



of the Mediterranean ? or, as one of my friends jocularly said. 

 Are they afraid of an inundation ?"" 



(To be continued.) 



On the Changes which the Laws of Mortality have undergone 

 in Europe zvithin the last Half Century, or from 1775 to 

 1825. By M. Benoiston de Chatbauneuf.* 



■'• JL HE physical circumstances amid which man is placed, 

 the passions which animate him, and the political revolutions by 

 which he is agitated, influence his organization, alter and mo- 

 dify it. The inhabitant of the north, free and happy, is not 

 born, does not propagate, and dies not, hke the suffering, un- 

 happy, and enslaved inhabitant of the south ; and the calcula- 

 tions, whose object is to determine the chances of his life, no 

 longer afford the same results, when it is spent in affluence and 

 independence, as they do when it is passed in poverty and ser- 

 vitude. 



2. These numerical results, therefore, whenever they can be 

 obtained, become the truest expression of the degi'ee of well- 

 being, which he owes to his institutions. They furnish, says a 

 celebrated English writer, Mr Malthus, more instruction re- 

 garding the internal economy of a people, than the most accu- 

 rate observations of the traveller. 



3. In the last century, several philosophers occupied them- 

 selves in investigating the laws of mortality, and the probabili- 

 ties of the duration of life, at all the periods by which its course 

 is divided. According to their calculations, the following facts 

 have been considered as sufficiently established : 



4. In a growing generation, the half died in the first ten 

 years of existence, and even sooner. 



5. Three-fourths had perished before fifty years, and four- 

 fifths at sixty ; or, in other words, of a hundred individuals, 

 fifteen only arrived at this age. 



• Read to the Royal Academy of Science on the 30th January 182^. . , 



s2 



