being priests, monks, or nuns, shall each be paid out of the moneys sent by his Majesty to the said country a pension of three hundred livres a year, and those who shall have twelve children, a pension of four hundred livres; and that, to this effect, they shall be required to declare the number of their children every year in the months of June or July to the intendant of justice, police, and finance, established in the said country, who, having verified the same, shall order the payment of said pensions, one-half in cash, and the other half at the end of each year.” * This was applicable to all. Colbert had before offered a reward, intended specially for the better class, of twelve hundred livres to those who had fifteen children, and eight hundred to those who had ten. These wise encouragements, as the worthy Faillon calls them, were crowned with the desired result. A despatch of Talon in 1670 informs the minister that most of the young women sent out last summer are pregnant already, and in 1671 he announces that from six hundred to seven hundred children have been born in the colony during the year; a prodigious number in view of the small population. The climate was supposed to be particularly favorable to the health of women, which * Edits et Ordonnances, I. 67. It was thought at this time that the Indians, mingled with the French, might become a valuable part of the population. The reproductive qualities of Indian women, therefore, became an object of Talon’s attention, and he reports that they impair their fertility by nursing their children longer than is necessary; “but,” he adds, “this obstacle to the speedy building up of the colony can be overcome by a police regulation.” Mémoire sur l’Etat Présent du Canada, 1667, is somewhat surprising in view of recent American experience. “The first reflection I have to make,” says Dollier de Casson, “is on the advantage that women have in this place (_Montreal_) over men, for though the cold is very wholesome to both sexes, it is incomparably more so to the female, who is almost immortal here.” Her fecundity matched her longevity, and was the admiration of Talon and his successors, accustomed as they were to the scanty families of France. Why with this great natural increase joined to an immigration which, though greatly diminishing, did not entirely cease, was there not a corresponding increase in the population of the colony? Why, more than half a century after the king took Canada in charge, did the census show a total of less than twenty-five thousand souls? The reasons will appear hereafter. It is a peculiarity of Canadian immigration, at this its most flourishing epoch, that it was mainly an immigration of single men and single women. The cases in which entire families came over were comparatively few. * The new settler was found