Item 67 - William Whewell to Richard Jones

4 pp.

Trinity College - WW is fairly certain he sails from London by the Ostend packet on Saturday, and hopes RJ can meet him there. Can RJ tell him where he can find some information about the history of Flanders. The civic architecture of Belgium has been much admired but WW knows of nobody who 'has attempted to characterize it in detail'. He has heard from Lubbock [John W. Lubbock] who will be glad to help RJ with any calculations. Lubbock has sent WW a table showing 'the difference of the increase of population upon the number of marriages and the number of births per marriage, and vice versa. Of course it shews also how any alteration in one portion of these elements of the law of population would affect the others' [the table is attached]: 'Tables should be accurate and extensive to justify their expressing so formal a shape and your general reasoning would be much more persuasive. The mathematics of population viz the construction of such tables as the above with regard to all the elements on which population depends should be gone through completely from one capable of doing it'. Malthus and others would have benefited from abbreviating and annotating their statistical details.