Show MORE DEATHS THAN BIRTHS A rapid and ominous decrease la the population of france statistics are very dull and dullness dull nesa is a thing to be shunned by all well regulated persons says a writer in the philadelphia telegraph but an article has just appeared in the journal Off iciel which is not quite uninteresting to france and the french during the year 1893 the deaths in france exceeded the births by over twenty thousand hitherto the population had been about stationary but this national deficit is serious the french from the highest to the lowest do not care for large families alleging justly enough that children are expensive articles did not a cook the other day lay her boes woes over the death of her first born open to her sympathizing mis tessy that baby cost me first and last not less than three hundred dollars the bereaved mother and after all that expense it only lived three weeks the birthrate birth rate is about as usual in france at the ratio of twenty two births for every thousand inhabitants but the increase in mortality is frightful and is attributed by the medical authorities entirely to grippe which they state has made more victims than the great cholera epidemics ever filled in one year it is also solemnly set forth that the children who were born at the time of the war of 1870 are adding to the mortality by expiring now but as these great medical lights state that the children born during the siege generally died in their infancy owing to their privations it is difficult to see why the mortality among the war babies as they were called should have ceased for twenty whole years to spring up again suddenly however there is the unpleasant fact that the population of france if something is not done will speedily resemble in this large and pleasant land the relative proportions preserved by a single huckleberry sailing gravely in a very large bowl of milk |