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Town and Country Population
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rural generation must not be forgotten. We, however, have reason to believe that the
correction on this ground will be insignificant, because the length of a generation is found
to be constant under very different circumstances of race, and therefore we should expect
it to be equally constant in the same race under different conditions; such as it is, it would
probably tell against the towns.
Let us now sum up the results. The corrections are not to be applied for (D) and (E), so
we have only to regard (A) x (B) x (C), that this—
(2681 x 74/100 x 1539/1700) / (2911 x 86/100 x 1585/1700) = 1796/2334 = 77/100.
In other words, the rate of supply in towns to the next adult generation is only 77 per
cent., or, say, three-quarters of that in the country. This decay, if it continued constant,
would lead to the result that the representatives of the townsmen would be less than half as
numerous as those of the country folk after one century, and only about one fifth as
numerous after two centuries, the proportions being 45/100 and 21/100 respectively.
