TABLE III. ------------------------------------------ Province.| Ratio.[A]| Province.| Ratio.[A] ------------------------------------------ Venice | 24 | Sicily | 117 Naples | 30 | Piedmont | 131 Lombardy | 100 | Liguria | 183 ------------------------------------------ [A] Per 10,000.
It will be noted that the lowest ratios are in provinces where the urban population is comparatively large. Wherever statistics have been gathered it is the rule that the percentage of consanguineous marriage is greater in rural than in urban districts. Table IV, also from Mulhall, illustrates this point.
TABLE IV. ------------------------------------------------- |_Ratio per 10,000 Marriages_. ------------------------------------------------- Country. | Rural.| Urban. | General. ------------------------------------------------- England | 79 | 71 | 75 France | 130 | 115 | 126 Alsace | 121 | 41 | 107 Norway[A] (Uchermann)| 810 | 260 | 690 ------------------------------------------------- [A] Includes second cousins.
In regard to the degree of consanguinity, it seems very probable that in the French, German, Italian, and English statistics and estimates few if any marriages beyond the degree of first cousins are returned as consanguineous, so in order to compare the Norwegian figures with the others they should probably be reduced by one half. Out of 1549 consanguineous marriages contracted in Prussia in 1889, 1422 were between "cousins" (probably first), 110 between uncles and nieces, and 16 between nephews and aunts.[20] The ratio of such marriages to 10,000 in France during the fifteen years ending in 1875 was:[21]
TABLE V. ----------------------------------------------- Degree. | Urban.| Rural.| All France. ----------------------------------------------- Nephew and aunt | 1.6 | 2.4 | 2.1 Uncle and niece | 6.0 | 5.6 | 5.8 "Cousins" | 96.0 | 119.0 | 113.1 ----------------------------------------------- Total | 103.6 | 127.0 | 121.2 -----------------------------------------------
[Footnote 20: Mulhall, op. cit., p. 383.]
In Italy during seven years ending in 1874, of all consanguineous marriages 92 per cent were of cousins and 8 per cent were of uncle and niece or aunt and nephew.[22]
Dally[23] is very skeptical about the accuracy of the French figures, but says that in Paris the records are well kept. He found that in the years 1853-62 there were 10,765 marriages in the _8me arrondissement_ of Paris, and of these he finds:
