203 
of Edinburgh, Session 1878 - 79 . 
done in the direction of estimating whether the marriage so entered 
into will be fruitful or not. My object in the present note is to 
contribute towards the elucidation of this question. 
The statistics furnished in the Decennial Census Reports and in 
the Annual Reports of the Registrar-General, afford the means of 
calculating the marriage rate among the general population, hut 
these are of no assistance to us in the present inquiry. First, as 
regards the rate of marriage, it would he clearly unsafe to assume 
that the rate deduced from statistics as to the general population, 
of which the working classes form a very large majority, would be 
applicable to the landed gentry. Secondly, the above mentioned 
statistics give us no information whatever as to the fruitfulness of 
the marriages entered into. It is therefore necessary to seek statistics 
in some other quarter, and statistics very trustworthy and perfectly 
suitable for our purpose, are found among the records of the British 
Peerage as contained in the various Peerages published annually. 
The facts given in them are not so numerous as could be desired for 
special purposes, but it is of even more importance that our statistics 
should be accurate than that they should be very numerous. It 
therefore seems to me that the statistics obtained from a careful 
examination of the records of the British Peerage may safely be 
adopted as the basis of our calculations in the present subject. I 
have accordingly taken the volume cf Lodge’s Peerage for the year 
1871, and gone carefully through it, noting all the cases of marriages 
of men, whether bachelors or widowers, entered into after the age 
of 40. The total number of such men, as to whom the necessary 
information was complete, was 339, of whom 132 were bachelors and 
207 widowers. These may seem small numbers on which to base a 
general law; but, in default of larger numbers, I think we must do 
the best we can to see what conclusions may safely be drawn from 
them. The following table shows the ages at which the marriages 
were contracted, and how many of those contracted at each age were 
fruitful or unfruitful. Most of the marriages included in the obser- 
vations were contracted many years ago, so that the information 
contained in the volume of Lodge was taken as conclusive as to 
whether the marriages were fruitful or not. For the comparatively 
few as to which there seemed a doubt, I referred to the volume of 
Burke’s Peerage, published in 1878. In all cases if a child was 
