TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 



735 



mainly in tlie older States and the towns and cities of the older States. The 

 phenomena in England and Germany and in other Continental countries are 

 accordingly not singular. The older countries, and the older parts even of a new- 

 country like the United States are becoming; more and more the centres where 

 populations live and grow, because they are the most convenient places for the 

 general exchange of services with each other among the component parts of a large 

 population, which constitutes production and consumption. A small expenditure 

 of effort in proportion enables such communities to obtain from a distance the food 

 and raw materials which they require. Migration is no longer the necessity that 

 it was. 



Decline in Rate of Groivth of Population. 



I come now to another idea appearing on the surface of the census returns 

 when they are compared for a long time past, and the connected returns of births, 

 marriages, and deaths, which have now been kept in most civilised communities 

 for generations. Great as the increase of population is with which we have been 

 dealing, there are indications that the rate of growth in the most recent census 

 periods is less in many quarters than it formerly was, while there has been a 

 corresponding decline in the birth-rates ; and to some extent, though noi to the 

 same extent, in the rate of the excess of births over deaths, which is the critical 

 rate of course in a question of the increase of population. These facts have sug- 

 gested to some a question as to how far the increase of population which has been 

 so marked in tha past century is likely to continue, and speculations have been 

 indulged in as to whether there is a real decline in the fecundity of population 

 among the peoples in question resembling the decline in France, both in its nature 

 and consequences. I do not propose to discuss all these various questions, but 

 rather to indicate the way in which the problem is suggested b}' the statistics, and 

 the importance of the questions thus raised for discussion, as a proof of the value 

 of the continuous statistical records themselves. 



The United States naturally claims first attention in a matter like this, both 

 on account of the magnitude of the increase of population there, and the evidence 

 that recent growth has not been quite the same as it was earlier in the century. 

 Continuing a table which was printed in my address as President of the Statistical 

 Society, in 1882, above referred to, we find that the growth of population in the 

 United States since 1800 has been as follows in each census period: — 



Population in the United States, and Increase in each Census Period of the 



Nineteenth Century. 



' This does not include population of Indian reservations, &c. 

 the ofhcial census for the first time. 



now included in 



