That which ought to be highest in fecundity is tenth in one table, fourteenth in another, and only thirty-first according to the third. That which ought to be third is twenty-second by the table, which places it highest. That which ought to be fourth is fortieth by the table, which places it highest. That which ought to be eighth is fiftieth or sixtieth. That which ought to be tenth from the top is at about the same distance from the bottom. On the other hand, that which, according to Mr. Sadler’s principle, ought to be last but two of all the eighty-four is third in two of the tables, and seventh in that which places it lowest; and that which ought to be last is, in one of Mr. Sadler’s tables, above that which ought to be first, in two of them, above that which ought to be third, and, in all of them, above that which ought to be fourth. By dividing the departments in a particular manner, {286}Mr. Sadler has produced results which he contemplates with great satisfaction. But, if we draw the lines a little higher up or a little lower down, we shall find that all his calculations are thrown into utter confusion; and that the phenomena, if they indicate any thing, indicate a law the very reverse of that which he has propounded. Let us take, for example, the thirty-two departments, as they stand in Mr. Sadler’s table, from Lozère to Meuse inclusive, and divide them into two sets of sixteen departments each. The set from Lozère and Loiret inclusive consists of those departments in which the space to each inhabitant is from 3.8 hecatares to 2.42. The set from Cantal to Meuse inclusive consists of those departments in which the space to each inhabitant is from 2.42 hecatares to 2.07. That is to say, in the former set the inhabitants are from 68 to 107 on the square mile, or thereabouts. In the latter they are from 107 to 125. Therefore, on Mr. Sadler’s principle, the fecundity ought to be smaller in the latter set than in the former. It is, however, greater, and that in every one of Mr. Sadler’s three tables. Let us now go a little lower down, and take another set of sixteen departments--those which lie together in Mr. Sadler’s tables, from Hérault to Jura inclusive. Here the population is still thicker than in the second of those sets which we before compared. The fecundity, therefore, ought, on Mr. Sadler’s principle, to be less than in that set. But it is again greater, and that in all Mr. Sadler’s three tables. We have a regularly ascending series, where, if his theory had any truth in it, we ought to have a regularly descending series. We will give the results of our calculation. The number of children to 1000 marriages is-- [Illustration: 0293]