THE LAW of BIRTHS and DEATHS BEING A STUDY OF THE VARIATION IN THE DEGREE OF ANIMAL FERTILITY UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF THE ENVIRONMENT - By CHARLES EDWARD PELL - PREFACE - This little work, as its title suggests, is an attempt to place the problems of animal fertility and the birthrate on a more scientific footing than they have hitherto held. It endeavours to show that the decline of the , birthrate cannot be explained on the hypothesis that it is due to the deliberate evasion of child-bearing but that it can be explained as the result of a natural law the function of which is to adjust the degree of fertility to suit approximately the necds of the race. The accepted theory cannot, by any stretch of in- genuity, be made to account for many of the most significant features of the birthrate problem. It cannot account for the vast and increasing proportion of completely sterile marriages among the intellectual classes in 811 countries, among the British nobility, and among the weaIthy classes generally-unless, indeed, its advocates are prepared to make, without a particle of reliable evidence in its support, the remarkable assumption that anything up to 25 per cent. of these classes take the most elaborate and troublesome precautions, from the very marriage eve, to avoid having s single child. It cannot account for rises in the birthrate such as took pIace during the early part of last century in England and recently in Japan. It cannot account for the seasonal fluctuations of the birthrate. It ignores the fact that the use of contraceptives involves the most.............