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THE IMPOR~CE OF GENERAL STATISTICAL IDEAS 359
pitfalls as any statistical problem can be, for the simple
reason that it can only be approached indirectly, as
there have been no statistical records over a long
series of years showing the proportion of births to
married women at the child-producing ages, distin-
guishing the ages, and showing at the same time the
proportion of the married women to the total at those
ages. Unless there are some such statistics, direct com-
parisons are impossible, and a good many of the indirect
methods of approaching the subject which I have studied
a little appear, to say the least, to leave much to be
desired. We find for instance that a comparison has
been made in Australasia between the number of
marria~es in a given year or years and the number of
births 10 the five or six years following, which show, it
is said, a remarkable decline in the proportion of births
to marriages in recent years as compared with twenty
or thirty years ago. It is forgotten, however, that at
the earlier dates in Australasia, when a large immigra-
tion was taking place, a good many of the children
born were the children of parents who had been married
before they entered the country, while there are hardly
any children of such parents at a time when immigra-
tion has almost ceased. The. answer to such questions
is in truth not to be rushed. and the question with
statisticians should rather be how the statistics are to
be improved in future, so that although the past can-
not be fully explained, the regular statistics themselves
will in future give a ready answer.
5. One more remark may perhaps be allowed to me
on account of the delicacy and interest of the subject.
To a certain extent the causes of a decline in repro-
ductive energy may be part and parcel of the improved
condition of the population, which leads in turn to an
increase of the age at marriage. and an increase of
celibacy generally through the indisposition of indi-
vidual members of the community to.run any risk of
sinking in the scale of living which they may run by
premature marriage. These causes, however. may