The proportion of still-births in the rural districts of France is governed by the same laws as in the metropolis.
In 363 provincial towns the ratio was, from
| 1836 to 1845 | 1 to 19.55 |
| 1846 to 1850 | 1 to 18.8 |
While districts more thinly populated gave, from
| 1841 to 1845 | 1 to 29 |
| 1846 to 1850 | 1 to 27[25] |
In Belgium, during a similar period, the ratio was much the same.[26]
| 1841 to 1843, in towns | 1 to 16.1 |
| 1841 to 1843, in country | 1 to 29.4 |
The apparent discrepancy between city and country, noticed as equally obtaining in Belgium and France, is chiefly owing to greater negligence of the country officials in registering the still-births, and to the fact, as we have seen in Paris, that the ratio of births to the population is greater in the city than in the country at large.
Finally, while the proportion of still-births to the whole number is greatly increasing in Paris, so is the number of known abortions.
We omit, for the present, the evidence afforded by arrests and trials, which we might here have turned to account. At the Morgue, which represents but a very small fraction of the fœtal mortality of Paris, and in this matter almost only crime, there were deposited during the eighteen years preceding 1855, a total of 1115 fœtuses,[27] of which 423 were at the full term, and 692 were less than nine months; and of these last, 519, or five-sixths, were not over six months, a large proportion of them showing decided marks of criminal abortion.