504 Effects of Epidemics on Registers of Bk. ii. 



49 to 10; and in the particular years 1719 and 

 1720, it is 50 to 10 and 55 to 10. 



Sussmilch draws the attention of his readers 

 to the fruitfulness of marriages in Prussia after 

 the plague, and mentions the proportion of 50 

 annual births to 10 annual marriages as a proof 

 of it. There are the best reasons from the general 

 average for supposing that the marriages in 

 Prussia at this time were very fruitful ; but cer- 

 tainly the proportion of this individual year, or 

 even period, is not a sufficient proof of it, being 

 evidently caused by a smaller number of mar- 

 riages taking place in the year, and not by a 

 greater number of births.* In the two years 

 immediately succeeding the plague, when the 

 excess of births above the deaths was so asto- 

 nishing, the births bore a small proportion to the 

 marriages; and according to the usual mode of 

 calculation, it would have followed that each 

 marriage yielded only 2'7 or 3*6 children. In 

 the last period of the table, (from 1752 to 1756,) 

 the births are to the marriages as 5 to 1, and in 

 the individual year 1756, as 6'1 to 1 : and yet 

 during this period the births are to the deaths 

 only as 148 to 100, which could not have been 

 the case, if the high proportion of births to mar- 

 riages had indicated a much greater number of 

 births than usual, instead of a smaller number of 

 marriages. 



The variations in the proportion of births to 



* Sussmilch, Gottliche Ordnung, vol. i. c. v. s. Ixxxvi. p. 175. 



