LAWS OF THE FERTILITY OF WOMEN. 



311 



TABLE XXIV. — Showing the Effect the Postponement of the Marriages 

 of Females has upon their Annual Puolificness. (Sadler.) 



Ages when Married. 



Average number of 



Births for each year 



of Marriage. 



Ages when Married. 



Average number of 



Births for each year 



of Marriage. 



From 13 to 16, . . 



•456706 



From 29 to 32, . . 



•589811 



„ 16 to 20, . . 



•503610 



„ 33 to 36, . . 



•776866 



„ 21 to 24, . . 



•520227 



„ 37 to 39, . . 



1-125000 



„ 25 to 28, . . 



•545163 







Now this Table is made from the data of lying-in charities. It is therefore 

 not a Table of fertile women, but of persistently fertile women ; for every woman 

 was entered in the records only when she came to have attendance in her con- 

 finement. All that the Table offers is corroboration of the law enunciated in 

 this chapter, that elderly women are more fertile than younger, so long as their 

 fertility endures. 



It is almost incredible that so acute a reasoner, as Mr Sadler is, could be so 

 deceived by appearances, as to suppose his figures showed that marriages at 39 

 years of age are as fruitful as marriages of any inferior age, down to 13. Yet, 

 for aught he says, he appears so to believe. 



Sadler did, indeed, get the length of seeing that the Table just given was 

 somewhat deficient. " It may," he says,* " perhaps be objected to the whole of 

 the foregoing proofs, that they are derived from a register which cannot profess 

 to give the whole number of children which the marriages it records shall pro- 

 duce, from their commencement to their termination, but only those which have 

 been born to each up to a period within these limits, all the facts which it can 

 record being necessarily retrospective ones. I shall, therefore," he continues, 

 " proceed to another series of proofs of the same principle, which will at once 

 silence every such exception, and afford a strong additional demonstration of its 

 truth. These are derived from the registers of the peerage, which, as I have 

 observed elsewhere, I have gone through in order to collect a body of authentic 

 facts illustrative of many of the principles advanced in these volumes. As far as 

 they relate to the subject before us, those facts are as follows :"— 



* Law of Population, vol. ii p. 279. 



VOL. XXIV. PART II. 



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