limitation of births from venereal disease, deaths from intemperance, etc., and artificial checks to conception. Malthus included artificial checks of this kind under vice (7 ed. of Essay, p. 9.n.), though they have some claim to be considered under moral restraint. But the question will be referred to in a later chapter.

Moral restraint will cover those checks to conception, voluntarily practised in order to escape the burden and responsibility of rearing children—continence, delayed marriage, and intermittent restraint.

No other checks are directly operative.

Misgovernment and the unequal distribution of wealth and land affect population indirectly only, and can only act through one or other or all of the checks already mentioned.

CHAPTER III.

Declining Birth-rate.

Decline of birth-rates rapid and persistent.—Food cost in New Zealand.—Relation of birth-rate to prosperity before and after 1877.—Neo-Malthusian propaganda.—Marriage rates and fecundity of marriage.—Statistics of Hearts of Oak Friendly Society.—Deliberate desire of parents to limit family increase.

It is not the purpose of this work to follow any further the population problem so far as it relates to deaths and emigration. Attention will be concentrated on births, and the influences which control their rates.

A rapid and continuous decline in the birth-rate of Northern and Western Europe, in contravention of all known biological and economic laws, has filled demographists with amazement.

A table attached here shows the decline very clearly. According to Parkes ("Practical Hygiene," p. 516), the usual food of the soldier may be expressed as follows:—