Scientific httelligencc. — Statistics. 379 



proposed to himself, in the first of his memoirs, to determine 

 whether poverty, which exercises so terrible an influence upon 

 human life at an early age, is equally fatal at an advanced age. 

 For this purpose, he has compared the mortality of six hundred 

 persons, placed in the highest classes of society, and already at 

 an advanced age, with the mortality of persons immersed in the 

 greatest indigence. He has found that the mortality in the lat- 

 ter was double what he found it to be in the former. M. de 

 ChateauneuPs second memoir is upon the mortality in the dif- 

 ferent countries of Europe since the commencement of the nine- 

 teenth century. The author has made inquiries in the different 

 departments of France, England, the Netherlands, Switzerland, 

 and several governments of Russia. The constant result has 

 been, that of a hundred individuals, twenty-five only in these 

 different countries arrive at the age of sixty, and that it is after 

 the age of seventy that man declines most rapidly. Moun- 

 tainous countries, in whatever latitude they may be situated, 

 are those in which the duration of human life is greatest. 



39- On the Distribution, by Months, of Conceptions and 

 Births, in its relations to Seasons, Climates, S^c. — M. Frede- 

 rick Cuvier, in May 1829, in the name of a committee, of which 

 he was a member, together with MM. Fourier and Coquebert 

 Montbret, made a report respecting a memoir by M. Villerme, 

 entitled. On the Distribution, by Months, of Conceptions and 

 Births, in its relations to Seasons, Climates, 8fc. The author 

 has perceived that, to arrive at the general knowledge of the in- 

 fluence of the seasons on the phenomenon of conception, it was 

 necessary to obtain the precise dates of a very large number of 

 births, and this number amounts to nearly fourteen millions ; 

 that secondary causes might modify the influence of the sea- 

 sons, and that unless his calculations could be established on 

 the broadest basis, they would be liable to error. M. Villerme, 

 in order to obtain a term of comparison, first collected from va- 

 rious parts of France, the births from 1819 to 1825, the num- 

 ber of which amounts to 7,651,437. He then brought them 

 together, month by month ; and, after reducing them to the to- 

 tal number of 12,000, in order to be the better able to compare 

 them, he inferred, in an absolute manner, the proportional births 

 of each month, and consequently the conceptions; but these births 



