who is intimately acquainted with Chinese conditions, and has closely questioned thirty-three physicians practising in various parts
19 Matignon, a French physician familiar with China, states that it is the custom for a woman to suckle her child for at least three years; should pregnancy occur during this period, it is usual, and quite legal, to procure abortion. Infants brought up by hand are fed on rice-flour and water, and consequently they nearly all die. 20
Putting aside altogether the question of infanticide, such a state of things is far from incredible when we remember the extremely insanitary state of China, the superstitions that flourish unchecked, and the famines, floods, and pestilences that devastate the country.
It would appear probable that when vital statistics are introduced into China they will reveal a condition of things very similar to that we find in Russia, but in a more marked degree. No doubt it is a state of things which will be remedied. It is a not unreasonable assumption, supported by many indications, that China will follow Japan in the adoption of Western methods of civilization.
21 These methods, as we know, involve in the end a low birth-rate with a general tendency to a lower death-rate. Neither in the near nor in the remote future, under present conditions or under probable future conditions, is there any reason for imagining that the Chinese are likely to replace the Europeans in Europe.
This preliminary survey of the ground may enable us to realize that not only must we be cautious in attaching importance to the crude birth-rate until it is corrected, but that even as usually corrected the birth-rate can give us no clue at all to natural increase because there is a marked