DEPOPULATION IN FRANCE

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 2094, 25 March 1889, Page 2

DEPOPULATION IN FRANCE

At a reoent sitting of the Aoademle. cfe Medicine, Paris, M. Lagenean, the statistician, pointed oat that the evil is not oonfined to any one class of sootety, in Prance. The. actual average of children" born io wedlock lv France Is three per marriage. What is , the. progressive Inoreaad.-ia families where the prbginy is eonfineol to three births? M.LageneaV reckons that after the fifth generation, at the end q£J24 years, of 100 married aouples having only three ohlldren eioh, more than one- half of their descendants,, will have no obttdren at all, owing to 49 men only of these generations, contracting -marriages,; and fto'fifequeht sterility *In ' wedlock, being ao average of 13 per oent. In the fifteenth generation after 434 yean, nine-tenths of the descendants of the primitive famtUs* will havja jjio male Issne. i'-TKat 5 fe tantamount to saying that m the year 1989, of these 100 original families only the remembrance will remain., No^doubt that* statistics mußt not be accepted unreservedly, M, Lageneaa maintains that It is caoessary m order to avdd-aoqnstaaan« decrease m population there should ba an average of four ohlldren born In each generation; and, taking this average of four children, he seokons at the iftesaih generation the number of sons married ! will be four times greater than dating tha first generation. Allowance is tßade for an lnorease of population at the rate of three per thousand, owing to tllegitlmaie births In the proportion of three' pif hundred, and also to immigration, there being an average of three aliens for eyexy thoaaand natives. It lev shown that la 1846 there were only twelve deseendeni* of 314 noble families dating from the I twelfth oentrny, and according to Benoiaton de Ohateanneaf, 380 noble families of ! that period had only baen prolonged 9DO yeara. An inquiry into similar fael*- In conneotion witb a small peasant community of 800 souls had shown that in.coM' paring the family names registered In 1555 with the same names 'registered In 1888, there are at this moment only 11 prr cent remaining of the original num« ber. The ultimate dliappearanoe, therefore, of old Frenoh families seems to b» the fate of the nobly and the'humblj born, .