ABSTRACT AND ANALYSIS OF THE INDIAN EDUCATION REPORT.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."'
Sm.,— In your kindly notice of my " Abstract " in your last issue I am said by the reviewer to be " certainly wrong" in saying that " there are. in India 4,000,000 more deaths under twelve years of age among females than among males." My statement is taken in substance from the official "Statistical Abstract for 1881," page 20, and only differs from it in being under the mark, as is usual with me when the best returns at my disposal are necessarily imperfect. The exact figures, as found there by subtracting the number returned for giils and boys under twelve years of age, are 4,605,408.
The reviewer, not unnaturally, thought of the number of deaths under twelve as having occurred in one year, while I gave the aggregate of deaths, as I say, "under twelve years of age," and, of course, as happening during all the period from one to twelve. His conjecture that I had "put a cipher too. much" would be near the truth on his supposition ; but is not a satisfactory solution to a statistician.
The following extract from the Census Returns for 1881, Vol. I., p. 74, bearing on the subject of the disparity between. the sexes in India, may interest your readers :—" The average number of females per 1,000 males throughout England and. India, is as follows :—England, 1,054; Madras, 1,021; Punjab,. 843; and India, as a whole, 954."—I am, Sir, &c., JAMES JOHNSTON.
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