Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 60.djvu/125

Rh and Ireland, as well as the senior partner, being taken into account, it cannot be said that there is any falling off in the rate of growth of the population since 1850. For several decades after that, in fact, the rate of growth of the United Kingdom as a whole was diminished enormously by the emigration from Ireland, and the growth since 1860 has been at a greater rate than in the thirty years before. There may be new causes at work which will again diminish the rate of growth, but in a broad view they do not make themselves visible owing to the disturbance caused by the Irish emigration. Still the facts as to the United Kingdom as a whole ought not to prevent us from considering the facts respecting England only along with the similar facts respecting the United States and Australasia.

These diminutions in the rate of growth of large populations, as I have indicated, are corroborated by a study of the birth-rates, and of the rate of the excess of births over deaths.

The United States unfortunately is without birth-or death-rates, owing to the want of a general system of registration over the whole country. This is a most serious defect in the statistical arrangements of that great country, which it may be hoped will be remedied in time. In the absence of the necessary records I have made some calculations so as to obtain a figure which may be provisionally substituted for a proper rate of the excess of births over deaths, which I submit for what it may be worth as an approximation, and an approximation only. In these calculations one-tenth of the increase of population between two census periods, apart from immigration, is compared with the mean of the population at the two census dates themselves, with the following results:

 Approximate Rate of Excess of Births over Deaths in the United States, calculated from a Comparison of One-tenth the Increase of Population between the Census Periods, deducting Immigrants, with the Mean of the Numbers of the Population at the two Census Dates.