264 LIGHT SCIENCE FOR LEISURE HOURS. 



where there has never been the most distant attempt 

 at sanitary improvement of any kind."- And this view 

 has been very generally accepted, not only by the 

 public, but by professed statisticians. Yet as a matter 

 of fact, we believe that no such inferences can legiti- 

 mately be drawn from the above table. Dr. Stark 

 appears to us to have fallen into the mistake, which 

 M. Quetelet tells us is so common, of trying to make his 

 statistics carry more weight than they are capable of 

 bearing. It is important that the matter should be 

 put in a just light, for the Royal Commission on the 

 Law of Marriage has revealed no more striking fact 

 than that of the prevalence of immature marriages, 

 and such reasoning as Dr. Stark's certainly cannot 

 tend to discourage these unwise alliances. If death 

 strikes down in five years only half as many of those 

 who are married as of those who are unmarried be- 

 tween the age of 20 and 25 (as appears from the above 

 table), and if the proportion of deaths between the 

 two classes goes on continually diminishing in each 

 successive lustre (as is also shown by the above table), 

 it seems reasonable to infer that the death-rate would 

 be even more strikingly disproportionate in the case 

 of persons between the ages of fifteen and twenty than 

 in the case of persons between the ages of twenty and 

 twenty-five. "We believe, indeed, that if Dr. Stark 

 had extended his table to include the former ages, the 

 result would have been such as we have indicated. 



