THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 



i°3 



■which we may hope is an advance in 

 the civilization of the world. But the 

 Victorian era and its great men are 

 not less memorable because they belong 

 to a past ■which can not return. 



VITAL STATISTICS AND THE 

 MAS EI AGE SATE 



Tables of vital statistics make an 

 appeal to the imagination not surpassed 

 by any writings in verse or prose. The 

 events in the career of an individual 

 are insignificant compared with the vast 

 exhibit of human life displayed in 

 tables of births, marriages and deaths. 

 If the birth of a child is of more con- 

 sequence than anything else, it is surely 

 momentous that in a single country 

 such as England half a million children 

 were not born last year who would have 



j been born if the birth rate had re- 

 mained what it was a few years ago. 

 If one tries to fancy the tragedy of 

 each single death, it is quite beyond 

 the range of the imagination to realize 

 the meaning of a statement such as 

 thirty years ago there died in England 

 more people from scarlet fever than 

 from cancer, whereas in 1910 there 

 were 2,370 deaths from scarlet fever 

 and 34,607 deaths from cancer. 



Reference has been made here to 

 birth rates and death rates as com- 

 piled in the excellent report of the 

 registrar general of England, and it 

 may be worth while to call attention to 



: the data concerning marriage rates. 

 The decreasing birth rate, the employ- 

 ment of women in industry and other 



j social conditions lead many to surmise 



/*ii % 51 H H\ U 01 Ob l\ 



Birth Rates. Death Rates axd Marriage Rates ix Exglaxd axd Waxes for 

 the past Forty Years. The birth rate has decreased from 36.3 to 24.4, the death 

 rate from 22.6 to 13.5 ; the marriage rate has remained about stationary since 1880. 



