1824 1825 Total, Average for these 5 years, Average for the 5 preceding years, viz, from 1816 to 1820, Annual increase of births during the 5 last years, 44,477 42,606 87,083 3,316 3,178 6,494 93,577 47,751 45,863 93,614 3,344 3,357 6,701 100,315 227,452 217,514 444,966 17,021 16,545 33,566 478,532 45,490 43,503 88,993 3,404 3,309 6,713 95,706 40,634 38,724 79,358 2,997 2,898 5,895 85,253 4,856 4,779 9,635 407 411 818 10,453 See Reise durch das Westliche Schweden Norwegen und Finland, by M. Schubert. + See work last cited. The illegitimate births during the last five years are to the total births as 1 to 13.3710. During the five preceding years they were as 1 to 14.172. In the above five years there were reckoned among the deaths 1. Children still-born, 2. Children stifled in bed by their mothers or nurses, 12,623 388 12 35 1,126 151 36 6 7 persons. Between unmarried Between widowers and Total. Classification of families in Sweden, according to the number of indivi duals composing them. End of 1825. The exports in iron and other metals, 6,840,000 or in fr. 15,390,000 including wheat, may be estimated } 12,188,000 or in fr. 27,423,000 at about, rixd. BOOK CXLIX. EUROPE. Europe Continued.—Description of Denmark and of the BOOK CXLIX. Limits of WHAT sublime recollections are connected with the history of this small Peninsula, which, washed on the east by the north sea, on the west by the strait of Cattegat, and on the north by that of the Skager-Rack; flanked on the east by large islands, and on the west by a small archipelago, interposes between Sweden and Norway! The cradle of the formidable Cimbri, the ancients called it Cimbrica Chersonesus. From this country there issued, 100 years before our era, those tribes which, joined to several others inhabiting the borders of the Baltic, ravaged Gaul and Helvetia, made Italy tremble, several times defeated the Romans, and were at last themselves defeated by Marius. The same people, under the name of Jutes and Angli, some centuries afterwards, invaded England, and, being hardy navigators, swelled that swarm of pirates from Norway and Sweden, confounded during the middle age under the name of Normans, the terror of the rest of Europe for a period of several centuries.* Jutland, which comprehends the whole peninsula, inhabited by the Jutes, whose name it bears; the dutchy of Sleswick, an isthmus, which with Holstein and the dutchy of Lauenburg, adjoining to it, was peopled by the Angli; the In the 9th century, these words were added to the Litany: A furore Normanorum, libera nos, O Domine. isles of Fionia or Funen, Zealand, Laaland, and several BOOK others of less importance, form the kingdom of Denmark, CXLIX. and present an extent of more than 1500 leagues of coast. Diminution of the Bal At the sight of these countries, which are separated by several straits, dangerous from their shoals as well as from their impotent breadth, such as the Sound, and the Great and Little Belt, one is tempted to broach a question that has been more than once agitated, and the solution of which divides in opinion such literary men, as inhabiting the borders of the Baltic, are favourably situated for verifying known facts and making new observations. Is it a fact that there is a declension in the level of this sea? Olof tic sea. Dalin says, that on the side of Sweden, it annually loses a half inch; Andreas Celsius has calculated that its diminution is four inches five lines every hundred years; Pontoppidan has made the same observation on the coasts of Denmark; Bergman regards this fact as incontestable. After a careful examination, we have arrived at this conclusion, that the diminution is very unequal; that in the Gulf of Bothnia, it may perhaps be stated at four feet in a century, while it is only two feet on the coast of Calmar, and still less on that of Denmark. The inhabitants of the islets on the north side of the Baltic, persuaded of this change of level, attribute it, not to the diminution of the waters, but to the elevating the soil. It is true, that many geological facts prove that the old rocks have been raised at a very remote period, by a force acting from the centre of the earth to its surface; but it is not probable that such risings exist at this day. Besides, although it is natural to think that the accumulation of the remains of marine animals, and other causes equally slow, ought to contribute, in the course of ages, to the diminution of the depth of seas, yet after all, the diminution of the waters of the Baltic, a sea with neither flux nor reflux, may be a mere illusion. The alluvions which the great and small rivers bear thither, drive back, as in other seas, its boundaries in some places and the equal motion of its waters, even when raised by the violence of the winds, also favours the idea of diminu |