| PROTESTANT. | PR. CT. | CATHOLIC. | PR. CT. |
| Denmark | 11 | Baden | 16.2 |
| England, Scotland, and Wales | 6.7 | Bavaria | 22.5 |
| Holland | 4 | Belgium | 7.2 |
| Prussia, including Saxony & Hanover | 8.3 | France | 7.5 |
| Sweden, with Norway | 9.6 | German Austria | 18.1 |
| Switzerland | 5.5 | ? Italy (defective) | 5.1 |
| Würtemberg | 16.4 | ? Spain (defective) | 5.5 |
| Average | 8.8 | Average | 11.7 |
| Or rejecting Italy and Spain | 14.5 |
What strikes us first of all is the richness of these averages. Dear New Englander, you will be the death of us with your averages. Not that we shall literally be killed off by them; but when we think of the "best fruits" of the scholarship of Yale College producing such averages, by adding up a lot of rates of all sorts of countries, big and little, and dividing the sum by the number of countries, the idea is absurd enough to kill any one with laughter. Exuberance of fancy has evidently exercised an unfavorable influence on the mathematical ability of the author of this article, and neutralized the effect of the excellent mathematical course given at Yale College.
We find in the table Italy and Spain marked with a note of interrogation, as much as to say, "What business have you here with such low averages? You ought to look a great deal worse than that, being such black and benighted Romanist countries as you are." And after them the word "defective" in brackets. No doubt the best of reasons will be given for this. Let us see. "The returns for Italy and Spain are utterly defective and untrustworthy. Assuming the ordinary birth-rate, the returns show that in Italy more than one fourth of the births fail to be registered." Why does not the New Englander give the figures, that we may judge for ourselves? What he has not done we will do for him:
Births in Italy.
| 1863 | 881,342 |
| 1864 | 859,663 |
| 1865 | 878,952 |
| Average | 873,319 |
The population of Italy is 24,231,860, and the birth-rate of Europe, according to the New Englander, is 1 to 28. Dividing the number of the population by 28, we get 865,608. The number of actual births exceeds the number expected, instead of being defective by "more than a fourth." As the reason alleged proves to be utterly false, we shall strike off the marks of interrogation from Italy, and leave out the "defective" in the brackets.
In like manner, the returns for Spain are treated. "As for Spain, its census returns, if quoted at all among statistics, are quoted at even a larger discount than its financial securities. The sum of the Spanish censuses for the last forty years has been up and down after the following zigzag fashion:
| "1828 | 13,698,029 |
| 1837 | 12,222,872 |
| 1842 | 12,054,000 |
| 1846 | 12,164,000 |
| 1850 | 10,942,000 |
| 1861 | 16,000,000 |
| 1864 | 15,752,807" |
Not having found our friend of the New Englander very precise heretofore in his figures, we did not exactly take them on trust this time, but looked in our "Handbuch," and found the following