The Population Of Great Britain
Increases So As To Double Itself In About Fifty Years.
To do this it
is evident that each married couple must average three children who
live to be married at the age of about twenty-five.
Add to these
those who die in infancy, those who never marry, or those who marry
late in life and have no offspring, the number of children born to
each marriage must average four or five, and we know that families
of seven or eight are very common, and of ten and twelve by no means
rare. But from inquiries at almost every Dyak tribe I visited, I
ascertained that the women rarely had more than three or four
children, and an old chief assured me that he had never known a woman
to have more than seven.
In a village consisting of a hundred and fifty families, only one
consisted of six children living, and only six of five children,
the majority of families appearing to be two, three, or four.
Comparing this with the known proportions in European countries,
it is evident that the number of children to each marriage can hardly
average more than three or four; and as even in civilized countries
half the population die before the age of twenty-five, we should have
only two left to replace their parents; and so long as this state of
things continued, the population must remain stationary. Of course
this is a mere illustration; but the facts I have stated seem to
indicate that something of the kind really takes place; and if so,
there is no difficulty in understanding the smallness and almost
stationary population of the Dyak tribes.
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