The Daily Dispatch: September 14, 1861., [Electronic resource]

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Curious facts discovered by the French census.

--The French census recently taken discloses some curious facts. Among these is an excess of marriages in the large towns and cities of France over those in the country, proportionately to population. It also appears that but about seven widows in every hundred marry again, while twice that ratio of widowers re-enter the connubial state. A majority of male children are shown to be born of parents of nearly the same age. The average duration of wedded life, in 1856, was 25 years, against 23 years and two months in 1836. One-third of the men, and about one-half of the women yearly married are unable to sign their names. This proportion, however, does not hold in the department of the Seine, where only one man in nineteen and one woman in six are unable to write.--In the same department, also, the proportion of children born out of wedlock and legitimated by the subsequent marriage of their parents, is much greater than in the provincial towns, and is smallest of all in the rural districts.