342 Of the Checks to Population Bk. ii. 



Speaking of the want of fruitfulness in the Swiss 

 women, he says, that Prussia, Brandenburgh, 

 Sweden, France, and indeed every country, the 

 registers of which he had seen, give a greater pro- 

 portion of baptisms to the number of inhabitants, 

 than the Pays de Vaud, where this proportion is 

 only as 1 to 36.* He adds, that from calculations 

 lately made in the Lyonois, it appeared, that in 

 Lyons itself the proportion of baptisms was 1 in 

 28, in the small towns 1 in 25, and in the parishes 

 1 in 23 or 24. What a prodigious difference, he 

 exclaims, between the Lyonois and the Pays de 

 Vaud, where the most favourable proportion, and 

 that only in two small parishes of extraordinary 

 fecundity, is not above 1 in 26, and in many pa- 

 rishes it is considerably less than 1 in 40 !| The 

 same difference, he remarks, takes place in the 

 mean life. In the Lyonois it is a little above 25 

 years, while in the Pays de Vaud the lowest mean 

 life, and that only in a single marshy and un- 

 healthy parish, is 29^ years, and in many places 

 it is above 45 years.;}: 



" But whence comes it," he says, " that the 

 " country where children escape the best from 

 " the dangers of infancy, and where the mean life, 

 " in whatever way the calculation is made, is 

 " higher than in any other, should be precisely 

 " that in which the fecundity is the smallest ? 



* Memoires, &c. par la Societe Econ. de Berne. Annee 1766, 

 premiere partie, p. 47, 48. 

 + Id. p. 48. 



