The evidence for these contentions is briefly (_a_) that just before the year 1876 an actuarial enquiry made by Mr. Ansell on behalf of the National Life Assurance Society revealed the fact that the average number of children to a family in the upper and professional classes at that time was somewhat over five, while the average for the whole population was 4.63 according to the Registrar-General’s Report; (_b_) that the birth-rate reckoned on the number of married women has since fallen from 304.1 per thousand in 1876 to 196.2 in 1911; (_c_) that families are now notoriously very small among the professional classes; and (_d_) that the birth-rate in some of the poorest districts of our large towns is still about as high as it was in 1876. We have not yet got the detailed returns of families for the census of 1911 in England and Wales; but for Scotland, where the variations in the birth-rate have been very similar, Dr. J. C. Dunlop, in a paper read before the Royal Statistical Society the other day, gave these details. The average number of children to a family among the poorest unskilled laborers is still about seven, while it is only 3.91 for medical practitioners, 4.33 for the clergy, and 3.76 for army officers. [Illustration: FIG. 1.—POPULATION OF VARIOUS COUNTRIES.] _VARIATIONS IN BIRTH RATE &c., IN ENGLAND & WALES_ [Illustration: FIG. 2.—ENGLAND AND WALES.] [Illustration: FIG. 3.—IRELAND.] Turning at once, however, to the accompaniments of these changes in the birth-rate, we find that the death-rate has also shown very decided changes, although the temporary fluctuations prevent our locating them with the same precision. For between fifteen and twenty years after 1853 the general deathrate was approximately stationary, or perhaps slightly rising; but since then there has been a rapid and steady fall from about 22 per thousand to a little over 13. The infantile mortality, after various minor fluctuations, has fallen very rapidly since 1900. The net result of these changes is that the rate of natural increase of population (excess of birth-rate over death-rate) during the last five years has averaged 11 per thousand, which is nearly the same as in the first five years 1853–57, when it was 11.7 per thousand, although it temporarily increased to 14.3 per thousand in the quinquennium 1874–78. The cry of “depopulation” or of “race suicide” has little more justification to-day when our birth-rate is only 24 and the average family probably between three and four children than it had in 1855 with a birth-rate of 34 and an average of 5 births per marriage. In an article in the _Daily Telegraph_ of January 17 last, a writer pointed out that mortality was very high among the large families of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and asked: “If to lose half, or more than half, their children was common among well-to-do people, how did poor folks fare?”