more or less steady fall, accompanied by a marked decrease in the number of marriages, and a tendency to postpone the age of marriage.
One colony, Western Australia, has a birth-rate which sometimes fluctuates above that of England; but it is the youngest of the colonies, and, at present, that with the smallest population, largely composed of recent immigrants. We may be quite sure that its comparatively high birth-rate is merely a temporary phenomenon.
A very notable fact about the Australian birth-rate is the extreme rapidity with which the fall has taken place; thus Queensland, in 1890, had a birth-rate of 37, but by 1899 the rate had steadily fallen to 27, and the Victorian rate during the same period fell from 33 to 26 per thousand.
In New South Wales, the state of things has been carefully studied by Mr. Coghlan, formerly Government statistician of New South Wales, who comes to the conclusion that the proportion of fertile marriages is declining, and that (as in the United States) it is the recent European immigrants only who show a comparatively high birth-rate.
Until 1880, Coghlan states, the Australasian birth-rate was about 38 per thousand, and the average number of children to the family about 5.4. In 1901 the birth-rate had already fallen to 27.6 and the size of the family to 3.6 children.
11It should be added that in all the Australasian colonies the birth-rate reached its lowest point some years ago, and may now be regarded as in a state of normal equipoise with a slight tendency to rise. The case of New Zealand is specially interesting. New Zealand once had the highest birth-rate of all the Australasian colonies; it is without doubt the most advanced of all in social and legislative matters; a variety of social reforms, which other countries are struggling for, are, in New Zealand, firmly established.