288 DR MATTHEWS DUNCAN ON THE 



" The statistics," says Mr Graham, registrar-general for England, " of a coun- 

 try in which the age of a mother at marriage, and at the birth of her children, is 

 not recorded, must always remain imperfect, and leave us without the means of 

 solving some of the most important social questions."* These data were secured 

 for the first year of the registrations in Scotland. The results to be now described 

 are derived from a study of a part of these registers, namely, those of Edinburgh 

 and Glasgow for 1855, and are founded on an analysis of 16,301 families of wives. 



Chapter I. — The Fertility of the whole Marriages in a Population. 



On this subject much has been written, in latter times chiefly by Malthusians 

 and anti-Malthusians, to whose works I refer generally. Elaborate comparisons 

 are made between the fertilities of marriage in different countries ; and there are 

 exhibited variations to so great an extent, that they appear themselves to show 

 the worthlessness of the data and of the comparisons instituted, at least in a 

 physiological point of view. In illustration, I may refer to the variations described 

 by M. Benoiston de Chateauneuf,t in a paper on the intensity of fecundity in 

 Europe at the commencement of the nineteenth century. The highest figure is 

 derived from some villages in Scotland, where there are asserted to be six or seven 

 children to a marriage, while his lowest figure is 2*44, the alleged productiveness 

 of marriages in Paris. 



We shall restrict our view to Great Britain, and we find the method generally 

 followed of estimating the fertility of marriage to be the very old and simple one of 

 dividing the number of legitimate births in any year by the number of marriages. 

 " In 1861," says Dr Stark,:}: " for every marriage which occurred in Scotland there 

 were born 4'64 legitimate children ; that is to say, 464 legitimate children were 

 born to every 100 marriages. During the same year, in England, only 389 legi- 

 timate children were born to every marriage, or 389 legitimate children to every 

 100 marriages." This is an exemplification of the ordinary method of calculating, 

 and it is evident that the result derived is of not the slightest value as a contri- 

 bution to the science of fertility. For, besides including marriages of all dura- 

 tions and at every fecund age, also second and third marriages, it includes many 

 marriages at ages when fertility has entirely disappeared. It is impossible, in- 

 deed, to state what is the exact relation between the number of marriages in a 

 population in any year and the number of legitimate children born in the same 

 year, with a view to any physiological result. This aspect of the statement is, 

 however, well worthy of being pointed out, because authors of respectability, 

 whom it is needless to name, refer to and use these figures as exhibiting the fer- 



* Registrar-General's Report for 1845, p. 14. (England). 



■f Annales des Sciences Naturelles, tome ix. 1826. 



\ Seventh Detailed Annual Report for 1861, published in 1865, p. xviii. (Scotland). 



