TABLE IV.-Average Amount of the Chief Elements of the Bank Accounts during the Whole Period, 1845-61.

TABLE V.—Average Variation from Week to Week, of the Note Circulation of the English Private and Joint Stock Banks, 1845-C2.

TABLE VI. — Average Variation during the Year of the Bank Note Circulation of Scotland and Ireland, at Four-weekly Intervals, 1853-62.

OBSERVATIONS on FRENCH POPULATION STATISTICS, particularly those of BIRTHS, DEATHS, and MARRIAGES. By T. A. WELTON, Esq.

[Read before the Statistical Society, 16th January, 1866.]

It is highly important, when occupying ourselves with the statistics of any considerable population, that we make, in the first instance, a clear and large outline of the principal features of the subject, so that every matter of detail may readily find its appropriate place in our minds, and serve as a colouring to heighten the effect of the great picture we have thus mentally placed before us, and to give it, in a manner, reality and life.

Without some such plan, the aggregation of details overwhelms without informing the mind; the colouring which, well distributed, would form an impressive picture, only serves to create a confused and meaningless daub.

I.-Divisions.

The divisions made use of in the following pages, are seventeen in number, or rather sixteen, besides the Island of Corsica, which naturally constitutes a little division by itself.

None of the continental divisions contain much less than a million of inhabitants, and their average population is about two millions.

In area, they are more unequal; but the remarkable peculiarities observable in Alsace, amply justify the constitution of that province into a separate division; and motives of expediency also dictated the creation of the divisions of the Alps and the Adour.

If Roussillon had not been so diminutive a country, it would have fully deserved a separate place. Under the circumstances, however, it has been thought best to annex it to the contiguous group of departments, comprising the vallies of the Upper Garonne and of its tributaries.

If the department of the Isere could have been subdivided, the valley of that river would have been allotted to the division of the Alps; and with it the city of Grenoble, which would have become the capital of that division.

Enumerated shortly, the divisions are nine in the north, viz.:—

And the table numbered XII in Appendix exhibits their actual populations and some statistics of births, deaths and marriages.*

II.-Crops Raised in the Several Divisions.

In a country so large as France, and where the climate and soil vary from the moist plains of Flanders to the arid heaths of Brittany and the slopes of the Alps and Pyrenees, a corresponding

* The statistics throughout this paper are principally derived from two official works, viz.:

1. "Statistique de la France. Deuxième série, tome viii. Statistique "Agricole," published in 1860. The values of produce are for the year 1852, but the estimated produce "in an ordinary year" is also stated. This work is very

elaborate.

2. "Statistique de la France. Mouvement de la Population, pendant les Années 1855, 1856, et 1857. Deuxième série, tome x," published in 1861.

VOL. XXIX.

PART II.

S

variety in the productions raised may be reasonably looked for. And indeed, where the manufacturing, mining, and urban elements are not prominent enough to furnish, as in England, the leading principles, by which any large grouping of districts must be governed, hardly any course can be more natural than to look to agriculture, the remaining great interest, for those distinctions, at once important and local, upon which every such classification must be based.

The production of wheat and oats is so general throughout France, that it is the exception when these kinds of grain fall below one-third in value of the total produce. This happens in Alsace, where the potato assumes greater importance than elsewhere in France; in Auvergne, where, as well as in Brittany, rye forms an enormous portion of the crop, and in the Adour valley, where maize, to a great extent, takes the place of other corn,

Wine is produced, to some extent, in every one of the divisions; but its production is insignificant in Brittany, Normandy, and Flanders. In the north, it is most largely produced in the division of the Upper Seine (Champagne) and in that of the Middle Loire.

In the south of France there are two divisions in which wine constitutes about one-fourth in value of the whole crop, viz., that of the Lower Garonne (around Bordeaux) and that of the Mediterranean coast. In the latter, however, the produce of the vineyards does not bear a very high reputation. In Auvergne and in the Alpine division wine forms, on the other hand, a comparatively unimportant fraction of the total produce, amounting in Auvergne to little more than one-twentieth of the entire crop.

As might be expected, artificial meadows are more common near Paris than elsewhere in France; the growth of roots and beans is also a feature most largely developed in the northern provinces. In French Flanders the multiplicity of the objects of culture is very striking. Olives and mulberries do not anywhere constitute a valuable portion of the crop, except in the south-eastern divisions of the Alps, the Mediterranean coast and Corsica.

The extensive pasturages of the mountainous Auvergne, and the comparative scantiness of those of the Mediterranean coast, and some of the northern divisions, constitute the last features which appear deserving of notice, in this very slight survey of the agricultural productions of the French territory. Two Tables (Nos. I and II) at the end of this paper will furnish the more precise ratios, upon which it is founded. From these, the following general statements are extracted:

In the north of France, although the climate is more congenial to the growth of grain, roots, and grasses, than that of the vine and *The southern part of department Aisuc, in the Flemish division, is however to be excepted from this remark.

olive, nevertheless the value of the crops is greater, in comparison with the population, than in the south; the ratios being respectively 168 and 140 frs. per head, excluding the products of domestic animals.

The comparative importance of the respective agricultural productions, in the north and in the south, may be stated thus:

The state of education in France does not present so near an approach to uniformity in the various provinces as is observable in our own country. Indeed, scarcely anything can be more striking than the contrast between the comparatively instructed populations of the old German provinces, and the wofully uninstructed ones in the centre, south and west. In passing from Strasbourg through Troyes to Orleans and Nantes, the divisions traversed give the following results :—

And proceeding a little farther, in nearly the same direction, we arrive at Western Brittany, where the proportions of those who could not sign their names were 57'1 males, and 68.0 females, out of every hundred married.

Western Brittany is the division where the males are worst