Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 60.djvu/124

116 The decline in the rate of increase is so great and palpable as to need no comment.

Here the perturbations due to immigration have obviously been greater than in the case of the United States. The country was, in fact, settled mainly between 1850 and 1870, without previously having had a population to speak of. But deducting immigration, the increase would appear to have been as follows in each decade:

 Rate of Increase Per Cent. of Population in Australasia, deducting Immigration, in the undermentioned Periods.

Of course, so long as immigration continues, the effect is to swell indirectly the natural increase of population, so that the large increases here shown between 1851 and 1870, and even down to 1890, may be accounted for in part as the indirect result of the large immigration that was going on. But whatever the cause, the fact is unmistakable that the rate of increase, apart from the direct immigration, has declined just as it has done in the United States.

There has been a similar though not nearly so marked a decrease in England, at any rate if we carry the comparison back to the period before 1850. The population at each census period since 1800 in England, with the percentage increase between each census period, has been as follows:

 Population of England at the Date of each Census since 1800 with Percentage of Increase between each Census.

Thus the increase between recent census periods has been sensibly less than it was before 1850; and the slight recovery between 1860 and 1880 has not been maintained. We are thus in presence of much the same kind of change as has been shown in the United States and in Australasia.

It should be noted, however, in order that we may not strain any fact, that, when the United Kingdom is viewed as a whole, Scotland