674 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



case of need, the matter is settled by an irregular affiance, and na- 

 tality loses little. 



The violent suppression of convents has also been proposed as 

 a measure for promoting the increase of marriages. A person who 

 has reflected much could not speak of such a thing. To what ex- 

 tent does any one suppose that might augment natality? The con- 

 vents at this time contain about sixty thousand women. Suppose 

 they were all as ready as other women to marry which is not the 

 case, for the fact that they have retired to a cloister proves that 

 family life has few attractions for them a simple calculation 

 shows that they would afford forty-five hundred births a year. 

 So France needs six hundred thousand infants every year, and 

 a plan is advanced to give it four or five thousand at most 

 and that by means of a violent measure, unworthy of an age of 

 freedom! 



Next are the measures proposed for diminishing involuntary 

 sterility. Is involuntary sterility as frequent as it is supposed to 

 be ? Our respected master, Jules Rochard, was surprised to find two 

 million sterile families recorded in the census reports. But the num- 

 ber does not appear excessive. We can not compare it with similar 

 returns abroad, for France is the only country, except in the case 

 of a few cities abroad, in which items of this kind are inquired into 

 by the census takers. But, according to different gynaecologists 

 chiefly German cited in the Academy of Medicine, the number of 

 sterile families should be sixteen per cent. Now, this is the exact 

 proportion found in France in the enumeration of 1896. The 

 really surprising thing about the matter is not the number of sterile 

 families, but the limited fecundity of the fertile families. There 

 are other figures to show that absolute sterility is not the cause of 

 the low rate of French natality. An inquiry respecting sterile 

 families was made in 1856, at a time when French natality was a 

 little higher than it is now, a comparison of the results of which 

 with those of the enumeration of 1886 shows that the number of 

 fruitful families had not diminished (83.6 per cent of the families 

 having one or more children then, to 83.3 in 1886). The factor 

 that has diminished is the fertility of the families. It is only neces- 

 sary to cite the measures that have been suggested to counteract 

 this supposed excessive sterility to make their inanity apparent. 

 Among them are reform of the abuse of tobacco and alcohol and 

 war upon syphilis. Do not these scourges exist among other na- 

 tions than us? Nothing could be more salutary than to war upon 

 them, but to connect their existence with the depopulation of 

 France is a singular exaggeration of their importance. More than 

 this, the physician of a benevolent institution in Paris has told me 



