58 
IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 
those of the Established Church. The denominations to 
which these buildings belong are Methodists, Congrega- 
tionalists, Baptists, Catholics, and Jews. The registered 
buildings which had been supplied with marriage register 
books were distributed among 426 registration districts. 
There remained 210 registration districts within which no 
register building had been brought under the operation of 
the new law. The forms of marriage in England and 
Wales during that year, were 666 per 1,000 solemnization 
according to the rites of the Established Church, and 334 
per 1,000 were contracted otherwise. Of the men who 
married during the year, 903 per 1,000 were bachelors, and 
97 were widowers. Of the women 928 were spinsters and 
72 were widows. 
Ages at Marriage. The proportion of re-marriages has 
decreased year by year since 1876. Among the persons 
who married in 1901, 50 per 1,000 of the husbands and 160 
per 1,000 of the wives were minors. During recent years 
there has been a decline in the proportion of marriages of 
persons under age. Of the over 500,000 persons who mar- 
ried in 1901 only 1 per cent of each sex failed to make 
definite statement as to age. As recently as the year 1881 
precise statements of age were made in only about 5-6 of 
the marriages. The mean ages at marriage deduced from 
such imperfect data could only be regarded as rough ap- 
proximations to the true mean ages of all who married, 
As the proportion of stated ages has increased the approx- 
imation has been brought closer. In the case of marriages 
between bachelors and spinsters the difference between 
the means of the recorded ages and the means of all the 
ages both of husbands and wives can not possibly exceed a 
small fraction of a year. In cases, however, in which one 
or both of the parties have been previously married the 
greater proportion of unstated ages leaves room for a 
much greater possible error. The mean age of those who 
get married now in England is greatly increasing. At 
present it is 264 years for bachelors, and 25 for spinsters. 
Signatures in Marriage Register. The marriage registeis 
show a further reduction in the signatures by mark, both 
