+-----------------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+ | SUMMARY. | +---------------------------------------------+------+------+------+------+ | | 1822 | 1823 | 1824 | 1825 | | +------+------+------+------+ |Total Marriages | 1305 | 1249 | 1225 | 1251 | | " Baptisms | 5911 | 6130 | 6030 | 6029 | | " Deaths | 4018 | 5157 | 4195 | 4496 | | +------+------+------+------+ |Excess of Births over Deaths | 1893 | 973 | 1835 | 1533 | +---------------------------------------------+------+------+------+------+ Thus it appears that the proportion of births to deaths is in the ratio of about four to three: amongst the coloured population, the births are very little more than equal to the deaths; in the city they fall much short of them; the increase, therefore, is on the white stock. The births to the marriages appear to be as nearly five to one. The _Statistical Register_ of Buenos Ayres assumes the annual measure of mortality to be one in thirty-two in the city, and one in forty in the country; and, taking the average of the results for 1822 and 1823, arrives at the conclusion that the inhabitants of the city amounted, at the commencement of 1824, to 81,136, and those of the country to 82,080, making in all a population of 163,216. If we calculate, according to the same rule, the mean of the results of the bills of mortality for the four years ending with 1825, it will give us a population for the city of 81,616 persons, and for the country districts of 76,640, in all of 158,256, at the close of 1825; about 5000 less than the estimate made in the _Register_ two years before, the falling off being in the country: but this is at once accounted for by the recruiting which took place in 1825 for the war with Brazil, which must have taken off a much larger number: allowing for which, I think we may fairly assume that the total population of the city and province of Buenos Ayres at the close of that year was not far short of 165,000 souls, being, as nearly as we have the means of calculating, about double what it was twenty years before. At the time I am writing, ten years afterwards, I have not a doubt that it amounts to nearly 200,000[13]. As an additional exemplification of the increase which has taken place in the population since the time of M. de Bougainville, I annex a plan of the city, showing what were its limits in his time, and what has been added since. From the numbers let us turn to the general composition of this population. The census of 1778 divided it into five castes. 1. The Spaniards and their descendants born in America, generally known as Creoles. 2. The native Indians.