CURIOSITIES OF MARRIAGE.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume I, Issue 25, 19 December 1861, Page 6 (Supplement)

CURIOSITIES OF MARRIAGE.

BEGISTEAR-GENEBAE’S EEPOET.

It takes the Registrar-General’s office a year and a half to analyse the registration results of a year the consequence of which is that we have now, in the middle of 1861 the report of 1859 laid before us. Marriage comes first in the list, and it would appear that the Established Church, still continues the great tyer of the marriage knot. Of 167,700 marriages 136,030 were performed in churches, 10,800 in Superintendent Registrars’ offices, the rest in Dissenting and Roman Catholic Chapels. This return of marriages includes a special class of unions, called in registration language ‘ re-marriages,’ singled out for special statistics of its own, which are intended, we presume, to constitute a basis of hope for the forlorn and desolate It may interesting to know that of ‘ re-married’ persons, 8000 widowers married—to use again the accurate language of Registration office— ‘ the same number of widows,’ while 7000 bachelors and widows, and 15,000 spinsters and widowers fill up the remaining space of the ‘ re-marriage’ department,—a numerical proportion which some may think indicative of unfairness, and too suggestive of the side on which the initiative lies in the important step. Marriage statistics involve another and a very distinct item at first sight rather foreign to this department, and which one would not naturally have looked to find in it—we mean educational statistics. It is curious that the marriage registers supply almost the only definite piece of satisfies we have relating to the state of adult education in the country, showing the extent to which the education in the parish school has been kept up after leaving school. The married couples have to sign their names—a severe test. Of 335,000 nearly 108,000 or 32 P el ’ ccnt -> —signed with marks—a number which is not equally divided between the two sexes—the women who do not write being to the men. in the proportion of 37 to 26 per cent. This is an improvement, however upon the marriage the men and 48 per cent, of the women were unable to sign their names, though it is not at the same time so much of an improvement as one might have expected with the growth of a whole fresh generation. We come now to the Births, and after we have heard the agreeable news—now made somewhat stale by the Census—that they were 34,000 above the births of the year before we come upon a registration result which contradicts the general law of the excess of female over male births. The preponderance was on the other side of the scale in 1856, the boys being nearly 29 to 21 girls. But the next piece of statistics is the more important one which arrests the eye of the watcher of national morality almost before any other disclosure of the Registration table. As the Marriage register has its educational results, so the Register of Births has its moral. It exhibits for 1859 the blot of 6 per centage of births or 1 in 15, out of wedlock. It is unnecessary to comment on a fact upon which everybody will make the same remarks, and those, of course, very trite ones. If recourse is had to the common weapon of recrimination, we believe it could be shown that many conntries have worse figures than these ; but this is a most unsatisfastory line to take. _lt is deserving of notice that the only form of disease which has gained ground in the country is that connected with the head, which exceeds now by 3 to 1 the amount of the same form of disease at the former date. This is, perhaps, the result of the very civilisation and mental growth to which we are indebted for the improvements in every other sanitary quarter. There is one sure martyr to all great advance and improvement, and that is the head, for nothing of this sort can go on without that prime mover and sustainer. He might complain a great deal more fairly than any other of the remonstrant parts of the body in the old fable. We owe everything to him, and he has to work hard that the body may gain all kinds of new facilities, remedies, and preventives. —Weekly Times.

Nonconformist Settlement in New Zealand. —The Council of the Association for establishing a settlement of Nonconformists in New Zealand hare issued their first report, from which it appears that already several hundred members are enrolled, the majority being persons of the middle class, who represent themselvss as small capitalists with £IOO to £SOO each. The organization having arrived at such a degree of maturity, it has been imperative to send out pioneer agents sooner than was anticipated to prepare for the arrival of the main body of 1,000, or thereabouts, next year. Two agents have been sent to enter into negotiations with the government of the province of Auckland, which appears to have entertained the project most favorably. Arrangements are also entered into with shipping firms for the passage out. Transportation of Animals.— The Melbourne Acclimatisation Society have received, per Benares, from Guile, a donation of a spotted deer, a pea-hen, and a monkey, which have been conveyed in safety to the Botanic Gardens. The Aberdeen clipper ship Moravian, which arrived in Hobson’s Bay on the 16th of July, brought out three Hereford cows in calf; one Ayrshire cow, with bull calf at foot; three Merino rams, selected from the imperial Uocii at Baris ; a number of song birds, comprising canaries, goldfinches, blackbirds, and thrushes, several Spanish and Dorking fowls, and a few Berkshire pigs, all of which were in good order. By the Lincolnshire some native fish and fresh-water lobsters were forwarded to England. —Australian and New Zealand, Gazette.