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CHAP. XII. 



Effects of Epidemics on Registers of Births, Deaths, and 



Marriages. 



IT appears clearly from the very valuable tables 

 of mortality, which Sussmilch has collected, and 

 which include periods of 50 or 60 years, that all 

 the countries of Europe are subject to periodical 

 sickly seasons, which check their increase ; and 

 very few are exempt from those great and wasting 

 plagues which, once or twice perhaps in a century, 

 sweep off the third or fourth part of their inhabi- 

 tants. The way in which these periods of mortality 

 affect all the general proportions of births, deaths, 

 and marriages, is strikingly illustrated in the 

 tables for Prussia and Lithuania, from the year 

 1692 to the year 1757.* 



* Sussmilch, Gottlicbe Ordnung, vol. i. table xxi. p. 83 of the 

 tables. 



kk2 



