286 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLVII. No. 1212 



recorded for females, and the lowest but one 

 for males. 



We have thus (the report states) the curious 

 phenomenon of an unprecedentedly high mar- 

 riage rate in 1915 succeeded by an almost un- 

 precedentedly low one in 1916. The flood of 

 marriages which set in with the second quarter 

 of 1915 did not ebb until a year later, so that 

 considerably more marriages were registered 

 in the first quarter of 1916 than in the cor- 

 responding quarter of any previous year. 

 These violent changes are no doubt the direct 

 consequence of the war, and appear in 191Y to 

 be giving place to a less abnormal state of 



There was in 1916 a notable increase in the 

 projwrtion of marriages of young widows. 

 The population of widows under thirty years 

 of age must have been greatly increased as a 

 result of the war. The marriage prospects of 

 spinsters were decreased for two reasons — ^there 

 were fewer marriageable males in consequence 

 of the losses of unmarried combatants, and 

 more marriageable females in consequence of 

 the losses of married combatants. 



In proportion to the total population, the 

 birthrate was 20.9 per 1,000 living. The re- 

 duction of natality accompanying the war only 

 amounted to 12 per cent., whereas in Germany 

 the fall was reported to have been 40 per cent, 

 in the two years 1915 and 1916. 



The excess of births over deaths was 277,303. 

 The number of fatal casualties incurred by 

 English and Welsh troops during the year, 

 says the report, must be very much lower than 

 277,303, and so the increase in population must* 

 have continued. The German statistics record 

 1,331,000 deaths in 1916, apparently exclusive 

 of at least the great majority of fatal war casu- 

 alties, as against 1,103,000 births; and the 

 Hungarian figures are for deaths "not in 

 action " 428,057, as against 333,551 births. 



The deaths of 508,217 persons were regis- 

 tered, a rate of 13.3 per 1,000. The deaths of 

 children under one year of age numbered 71,- 

 646, or 91 per 1,000, the lowest rate ever re- 

 corded. Eighty-eight reputed centenarians 

 died, 70 of whom were women. 



STANDARD TIME AT SEA 



Following the action of the French navy the 

 Lords of the Admiralty summoned a confer- 

 ence of representatives of the various govern- 

 ment departments and scientific societies in- 

 terested, to consider and report upon the desira- 

 bility of establishing a standard time at sea 

 in the British naval and merchant services. 

 The report of this conference has now been 

 presented to the Lords of the Admiralty, and 

 the Geographical Journal publishes a summary 

 of its recommendations. The conference had 

 the advantage of the assistance of the French 

 hydrographer, M. Eenaud, accompanied by 

 Lieutenant de Vaisseau Moreau, of the wireless 

 stafi of the French navy. 



The principal business of the conference was 

 to consider the desirability of extending to the 

 sea the system of time zones now widely 

 adopted on the land; a system whose advan- 

 tages have long been recognized as highly 

 conducive to precision and certainty in the 

 interchange of telegrams, the arrangements of 

 train and postal services, and in many other 

 departments of life. Until recently a ship at 

 sea was a law to itself; and although ship's 

 time was usually more or less adjusted to ap- 

 parent time at noon each day, there was no 

 certainty that the time of a message despatched 

 from the ship or of an entry in the ship's log 

 could be translated into Greenwich mean time. 

 The conference was of opinion that the estab- 

 lishment of zones at sea (outside territorial 

 waters) corresponding to the time zones on 

 land is the most practical method of obtaining 

 uniformity in time reckoning at sea ; and after 

 examination of the " Planisphere des Fuseaux 

 Horaires " prepared by M. Kenaud (of which a 

 copy has for some time been displayed in the 

 Map Room of the Society) it recommended the 

 adoption of the boundaries of the zones as de- 

 fined therein and now in use in the French 

 navy. It also expressed a hope that those 

 countries which have not yet adopted the sys- 

 tem of hour zones will in course of time con- 

 form to this system. The question of summer 

 time was considered, and the conference was 

 of the opinion that there was no advantage in 

 introducing summer time on the high seas. 



