LIFE AND DEATH.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 780, 1 April 1910, Page 5

LIFE AND DEATH.

INTERESTING FIGURES AND. COMMENT. The Registrar of .Births,. Deaths, and Marriages (Mr. G. G. Hodgkins) supplies the following • statistical figures for the quarter and month ended yesterday, supplementing them with a comparison with the figures of tho corresponding periods of last year: -The figures for tho quarter arc as follows:— . 1905. . 1910. I Births 490 530 Deaths 239 220 Marriages 261 . 248 The figures for the month of March were:— 1909. 1910. Births 174 147 Deaths 84 63 Marriages _.. 82 118 An analysis of these figures shows that thongh there was a falling off in the number of births during the month' as compared with March, 1909, the increase of 40 in the quarter is quite satisfactory, In reviewing the death statistics there is not the same causo for satisfaction, though the quarter's figures are 19 less than last year. The reason for this is that the Penguin's death-list (70) was included in tho figures for the first quarter of 1909, so that the figures for the last quarter compare unfavourably with the natural death-roll for the first quarter of last year. Little oupid should really be "carpeted" for the mariner in which tho marriage figures are dropping. There were only 248 marriages during the last quarter, compared with 201 during the corresponding period of last year; that, too, in the face of Easter being included in the last quarter, whereas it occurred in tho second quarter last year. There were about 70 marriages celebrated in Wellington during Easter, eo that, to pursue the argument to its proper conclusion, our marriago figures would have made a'very poor show for tho quarter had it not been for the early Easter.