being evidently due to very imperfect returns of marriages); New Jersey shows one to 49.39; Kansas one to 17.42; Wisconsin one to 21.07; and Delaware one to 36.99. These last, it should be noted, are some of them for shorter periods than twenty years."[749] This method of comparing the number of divorces granted with the number of marriages celebrated is not very satisfactory. "It is vicious in this, that the marriages celebrated each year cannot be compared scientifically with the divorces drawn from the whole volume of marriages celebrated in the past thirty or forty years, many of which even took place in foreign countries."[750] The commissioner has therefore adopted another method of comparison, not entirely free from error, based on the estimated number of existing married couples. From this it appears that in 1870, for the entire country, there were 664 married couples to one divorce granted, while in 1880 the number of such couples to one decree had fallen to 481.[751] Estimated another way, on the basis of the eleventh census, in 1867 there were 173 divorces to 100,000 couples and 250 in 1886.[752] [747] WRIGHT, _Report_, 139-42. [748] According to the table by classified causes: WRIGHT, _Report_, 181-83. However, the relative number of divorces granted on the wife's petition varies greatly among the states: from 39.3 per cent. in North Carolina to 77.9 in Nevada: compare the table in WILLCOX, _The Divorce Problem_, 34-37. [749] DIKE, "Statistics of Marriage and Divorce," _Pol. Sci. Quart._, IV, 607, summarizing the tables and figures in WRIGHT, _Report_, 135-39. [750] WRIGHT, _Report_, 137. [751] _Ibid._, 147-49. [752] WILLCOX, _The Divorce Problem_ (2d ed.), 16-19, and Appendix.