290 DR MATTHEWS DUNCAN ON THE 



Franklin says, that the females in America have, " one with another, eight 

 children to a marriage;"* almost certainly a great exaggeration, especially as 

 he does not even state, as a condition, that the marriages were prolific. 



Chapter II. — Annual Fertility of the Married Women of Child-bearing Age in 



a Population. 



Seeing the inexactness of the statements of which those just given are an 

 example, Dr Stark has adopted another method of arriving at the comparative 

 prolificness of marriages in England and Scotland. " In 1861," says he, " when 

 the census was taken in England, the numher of wives at the child-hearing ages, 

 viz., 15 to 45, was 2,319,049 ; and as the numher of legitimate children horn 

 during the year amounted to 652,249, this gives the proportion of one legitimate 

 child for every 355 wives at the ages 15 to 45 in the population ; or, in other 

 words, every 355 wives in England, at these ages, gave birth to 100 children 

 during the year. In Scotland, during the same year, there were 305,524 wives 

 between the ages of 15 and 45 years ; and as 97,080 legitimate children were horn 

 during the year, this gives the proportion of one legitimate child for every 3 14 

 wives at these ages in the population; or, in other words, every 314 wives in the 

 population of Scotland, at these ages, gave birth to 100 legitimate children during 

 the year." 



While for every marriage in 1861 there were born in the same year in Scot- 

 land 4-64 legitimate children ; every 3-15 wives between 15 and 45 in Scotland in 

 the same year produced one legitimate child. Of 54,408 wives in Edinburgh and 

 Glasgow in 1855 between 15 and 44 years of age, inclusive, 16,290 bore children 

 fit for registering; or, 1 child was born to every 3 3 wives aged from 15 to 44. 



If we adopt these latter statements, we must take care to note that they 

 do not give the fertility of the whole marriages in a population, as the older and 

 former statements in chapter first do. These latter give the annual productive- 

 ness of a mass of married women in our populations. The results of the two 

 methods of computing the fertility of marriage cannot be contrasted, for each is 

 concerned with an entirely different topic from the other. 



Chapter III. — The Fertility of the whole Marriages in a Population that are 



Fertile at a given time. 



In Edinburgh and Glasgow in 1855 there were 16,393 wives who bore first 

 or subsequent children. Of these the necessary data are given in 16,301 cases 

 These 16,301 mothers had produced 60,381 children; or 37 children constituted 



* Sadler. Law of Population, vol. ii. p. 495. 



