66 Meetings of the Scientific Association of Great Britain. 
examination by a committee of parliament, im order to give informa- 
tion with regard to the census taken among us in 1829, and on the 
plan of registers in our country. I submitted to it with pleasure, 
happy if I could aid in establishing plans which might give more 
precision to a subject so important as that of population. Few coun- 
tries, from the position, boundaries, and civil registers, deserve so 
much as ours to be studied in reference to population. Sweden and 
Switzerland have for a long time attracted the attention of the learn- 
ed, with regard to the same subject. ‘The reports that I presented 
at Cambridge, and the promise that I thought I could give that our 
government would willingly make any investigations beneficial to 
science, led me to think that our country might be selected as offer- 
ing all desirable facilities for studying this subject. ‘This state of 
things, of which we shall be the first to reap the fruits, will without 
doubt be valued as it should be, and I venture to believe that this 
will be one of the most happy results of our scientific relation with 
England. 
Mr. Malthus, in consequence of the proposals that I thought my- 
self authorized to make, wished me to ask the following questions, 
which I hastened to send to the Minister of the Interior, who has 
promised to collect the elements necessary to answer them in a satis- 
factory manner. ‘They wish to know— 
The number of births arismg from each marriage ; 
What proportion of the children attain a marriageable age ; 
The number of living children from each marriage ; 
The wages for manufactures and agriculture in different provinces, 
particularly the price of a common day’s work of a laborer ; 
The quantity of wheat which such a day’s wages will purchase 
in ordinary times ; 
The average price of different kinds of grain ; 
The usual food of a day laborer ; 
The proportion of barren marriages ; 
‘The proportion of marriages which These prodnee five or more 
living children. 
The committee also expressed a wish to know the measures taken 
by the Belgian government, since 1815, for the reduction of men- 
dicity. 
The answers to these questions, im the hands of competent persons 
would produce for ourselves valuable results. 
