Page:An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798).djvu/144

118 "The years 1738, 1740, 1750, and 1751, were particularly sickly."

For further information on this subject, I refer the reader to Mr Susmilch's tables. The extracts that I have made are sufficient to shew the periodical, though irregular, returns of sickly seasons; and it seems highly probable that a scantiness of room and food was one of the principal causes that occasioned them.

It appears from the tables, that these countries were increasing rather fast for old states, notwithstanding the occasional seasons that prevailed. Cultivation must have been improving, and marriages, consequently, encouraged. For the checks to population appear to have been rather of the positive, than of the preventive kind. When from a prospect