Note 239-3 — Chapter I

Thus Süssmilch, Göttliche Ordnung in den Veränderungen des menschlichen Geschlechts, 1st ed., 1742, 4th ed., 1775, I, 126 ff., assumes that one marriage a year takes place, on from every 107 to every 113 persons living. On the other hand, 22 Dutch towns gave an average of 1 in every 64. This abnormal proportion is very correctly ascribed by Malthus, Principles of Population, II, ch. 4, to the great mortality of those towns: viz., a death for every 22 or 23 persons living, while the average is 1:36. The Swiss, Müret, (in the Mémoires de la Société économique de Berne, 1766, I, 15 ff.), could not help wondering that the villages with the largest average duration of life should be those in which there were fewest births. "So much life-power and yet so few procreative resources!" Here too, Malthus, II, ch. 5, solved the enigma. The question was concerned with Alpine villages with an almost stationary cow-herd business: no one married until one cow-herd cottage had become free; and precisely because the tenants lived so long, the new comers obtained their places so late. Compare d'Ivernois, Enquête[TN 66] sur les Causes patentes et occultes[TN 67] de la faible Proportion de Naissances à Montreux: yearly 1:46, of the persons living, while the average in all Switzerland was 1:28.

In France according to Quételet, Sur l'Homme, 1835, I, 83 ff., there was: