Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/150

90 uninstructed villagers who, whatever their other virtues, are not remarkable for habits of accuracy and precision, they would be frequently apt to include under this age both adults above and children below it, unless I stimulated and aided their attention by requiring separate and distinct statements of the number of persons above 14 and below 5. Columns third and fifth, therefore, of Table I., were at first regarded only as auxiliary to the strict accuracy of the information contained in column fourth, which alone I considered as properly belonging to my enquiry. I mention this that I may not be supposed to have charged myself with a different duty, viz., the taking of a census of the population, from that which was entrusted to me, although I do not imagine that Government or the General Committee will regret the additional information thus supplied, besides that the conclusions reached in this way are indispensable to a correct appreciation of the amount of intellectual cultivation in the district.

In determining the number of children of the teachable age, it was obviously necessary to distinguish between boys and girls, and the distinction of sex was carried also into the other two columns. The results which the table seems to establish regarding the proportion of the sexes in Nattore are as follows:—The number of adult males is less than that of adult females, the former being only 59,500, while the latter is 61,428. On the other hand the number of non-adult males is greater than the number of non-adult females, the former being 41,079, while the latter is 33,289. Of the total population of Nattore, the number of males is 100,579, and that of females 94,717, which, disregarding fractional parts, gives 94 females to every 100 males, a proportion which, approaching very nearly to what is found to prevail where more attention has been paid to the statistics of population than in India, may be considered to derive from this coincidence a confirmation of its accuracy. I have said that Table I. “seems to establish” these results, for highly estimating the importance of the strictest accuracy in such inquiries, I do not wish to conceal the fact that, new to the work in which I engaged, and guided only by my own unaided judgment, I did not at first employ all those guards against error which afterwards occurred to me. I do not, therefore, place absolute confidence in the conclusions to which I have come respecting the population of Nattore, but at the same time I do not think that they can be very remote from the truth.

According to the loose and unchecked returns of 1834, the total population of Nattore was 185,409; and according to the most dilligent and careful examination that I have been able to make, it amounts to 195,296, making a difference of excess in my estimate amounting to 9,887. If we suppose a proportional deficiency in all the returns of 1834, then the total population of the district will amount to 1,121,745. It cannot, I think, be less;