122
AN ESSAY ON THE
would seem to shew[1]. For five years, ending in 1777, the proportion of births to burials in the kingdom of Naples was 144 to 1OO; but there is reason to suppose, that this proportion would indicate an increase much greater than would be really found to have taken place in that kingdom during a period of a hundred years.
Dr. Short compared the registers of many villages and market towns in England for two periods; the first, from Queen Elizabeth to the middle of the last century, and the second, from different years at the end of the last century, to the middle of the present. And from a comparison of these extracts, it appears that in the former pe-
- ↑ See Dr Price's Observations, 2 Vol. Postscript to the controversy on the population of England and Wales.
riod
