350 Of the Checks to Population Bk. ii. 



however, were all actually mothers, which every 

 wife is not ; but allowing for the usual proportion 

 of barren wives at Vevay, which he had found to 

 be 20 out of 478, it will still appear that the mar- 

 ried women one with another produced above 5-|- 

 children.* And yet this was in a town, the inha- 

 bitants of which he seems to accuse of not enter- 

 ing into the marriage state at the period when na- 

 ture calls them, and, when married, of not having 

 all the children which they might have.t The ge- 

 neral proportion of the annual marriages to the 

 annual births in the Pays de Vaud is as 1 to 3*9,^ 

 and of course, according to the common mode of 

 calculation, the marriages would appear to yield 

 3*9 children each. 



In a division of the Pays de Vaud into eight 

 different districts, M. Muret found, that in seven 

 towns the mean life was 36 years ; and the pro- 

 bability of life, or the age to which half of the 

 born live, 37. In 36 villages, the mean life was 

 37, and the probability of life 42. In nine parishes 

 of the Alps the mean life was 40, and the proba- 

 bility of life 47. In seven parishes of the Jura 

 these* two proportions were 38 and 42 : in 12 corn 

 parishes, 37 and 40; in 18 parishes among the 



x 



* On account of second and third marriages, the fecundity of 

 marriages must always be less than the fecundity of married 

 women. The mothers alone are here considered, without refer- 

 ence to the number of husbands. 



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

 p. 32. 



% Id. table i. p. 21. 



