Ch. iii. in Russia. 303 



To these reasons I should add, that the popula- 

 tion of each province is probably estimated by 

 the number of boors belonging to each estate in 

 it ; but it is well known that a great part of them 

 have leave to reside in the towns. Their births 

 therefore appear in the province, but their deaths 

 do not. The apparent mortality of the towns is 

 not proportionably increased by this emigration, 

 because it is estimated according to actual enu- 

 meration. The bills of mortality in the towns 

 express correctly the numbers dying out of a 

 certain number known to be actually present in 

 these towns; but the bills of mortality in the 

 provinces, purporting to express the numbers 

 dying out of the estimated population of the pro- 

 vince, do really only express the numbers dying 

 out of a much smaller population, because a con- 

 siderable part of the estimated population is 

 absent. 



In Petersburg, it appeared by an enumeration 

 in 1784, that the number of males was 126,827, 

 and of females only 05,619.* The proportion of 

 males was therefore very nearly double, arising 

 from the numbers who came to the town to earn 

 their capitation tax, leaving their families in the 

 country, and from the custom among the nobles 

 of retaining a prodigious number of their boors as 

 household servants in Petersburg and Moscow. 



The number of births in proportion to the whole 

 population in Russia is not different from a com- 



* Memoires par W. L. Kraft, Nova Acta Academise, torn. iv. 



