50 
Proceedings of the Royal Society 
It was pointed out that this appeared to be a special provision of 
nature to protect the father of a family, so that he might provide 
for his offspring, and superintend their rearing ; but that it was 
also capable of being so far explained by natural causes. The 
married man was in one sense a selected life ; because the weak, 
the diseased, the intemperate, and the licentious, did not marry ; 
so that all this unhealthy class of persons remained bachelors, and 
it was a known fact that their mortality was high. 
It was then pointed out that summarising the tables — that is, 
comparing the total deaths at all ages with the total number living, 
led to a conclusion the very opposite of the truth, inasmuch as it 
seemed to prove that unmarried men had the healthiest lives, for 
it showed that in every 100,000 unmarried men only 1723 died 
annually, in a like number of married men 2338 died ; and the 
natural conclusion from such a fact would be, that the death-rate of 
the unmarried was much lower than that of the married man. 
It was explained how this paradoxical result was produced ; and 
the English Registrar-G-eneral’s tables of the mortality of men 
following different occupations was referred to, showing the fallacy 
of summarising the facts in these tables, at the same time pointing 
out how the true comparative healthiness of each occupation could 
be ascertained. 
The death-rates of the married and unmarried women were then 
explained. It was shown that at each quinquennial age, from 15 to 
30 years, the death-rates of the married women slightly exceeded 
that of the unmarried, being greatest at the junior age, hut ap- 
proximating and becoming identical at 30. From 30 to 40 years 
the mortality of the married women was slightly lower than that 
of the unmarried, but from 40 to 45 it was very slightly higher. 
From 45 years to the close of life, however, the death-rates of the 
married women were lower than those of the unmarried. The dif- 
ference, however, was comparatively trifling at every age, as com- 
pared with the mortality of the married and unmarried men. 
It was explained that these variations in the death-rates of the 
married and unmarried women were explicable. The higher mor- 
tality among the married under 30 years was caused by the addi- 
tional dangers which attended the birth of the first child, and just 
in proportion to the number of mothers who bore their first child 
