The Descent of Man

comfort, were to select, as they often do, women
in the prime of life, the rate of increase in
the better class would be only slightly lessened.
It was established from an enormous body of
statistics, taken during 1853, that the unmarried
men throughout France, between the ages of
twenty and eighty, die in a much larger proportion
than the married: for instance, out of every
1000 unmarried men, between the ages of
twenty and thirty, 11.3 annually died, whilst of
the married, only 6.5 died. (23. Dr. Farr, ibid.
The quotations given below are extracted from
the same striking paper.) A similar law was
proved to hold good, during the years 1863 and
1864, with the entire population above the age
of twenty in Scotland: for instance, out of every
1000 unmarried men, between the ages of
twenty and thirty, 14.97 annually died, whilst
of the married only 7.24 died, that is less than
half. (24. I have taken the mean of the quinquennial
means, given in 'The Tenth Annual