621 
of Edinhurgli, Session 1883-84. 
bably find that in the one district there was a large hospital or 
infirmary drawing cases from every corner of the country, and with 
an abnormally large mortality, while in the other there was nothing 
of the kind ; or that, in the one, the condition of the house accom- 
modation, drainage, and water supply was very faulty, and in the 
other quite the reverse. As in the case of deaths, very erroneous 
conclusions are apt to be drawn from the statistics of births and 
marriages. I propose to make a few observations on each of these 
three classes of events. 
I. Births. — The periodical returns from two parishes, almost iden- 
tical in population, social condition, occupation, and other circum- 
stances, continue to present very different figures in the number of 
their respective births ; and ordinary readers are very much per- 
plexed by the published results. On inquiry, it is found that in 
one of the parishes the number of young married couples is 
exceptionally large, while in the other the proportion of bachelors 
and elderly married couples is much above the average. A large 
permanent inequality in the numbers of the two sexes is another 
manifest explanation of differences in the number of births. When 
we compare the number of these events reported from a parish in 
Orkney or Shetland with those occurring in an inland parish 
containing the same number of ordinary inhabitants, we can 
frequently account for the small proportion of the former by the 
circumstance of an unusual number of males having been absent at 
sea for a long period. 
In a paper which I read before the Society last session, I made 
some explanatory observations upon the disproportionate numbers of 
illegitimate births in town and country districts respectively. The 
principal cause of their comparative paucity in the former is, no 
doubt, the barren prostitution of large centres of population. There, 
also, it is probable that at least a few illegitimate births escape 
registration. 
The merely temporary residence of the mothers of illegitimate 
children is frequently adverted to by registrars of rural districts as 
unfairly swelling the number of these births ; and where the 
domicile can be ascertained, it is duly entered in the register. 
Others occasionally allude to the circumstance of conception having 
