?8
It will be observed that the highest mortality occurs early in 1901,
the effect of the failure of the rains in 1899 having been to make the Malaria
season of 1900-01 an unusually severe one,
THE BIRTH-RATE.-The seasonal birth-rate curves for all the nine
tálukas of the Thána District show the same variations for different months.
Although rural Salsette so much resembles the average táluka of the Thána
District its curve shows those seasonal variations to a much less degree than
the others, probably on account of its being almost the only táluka with any-
thing of an urban population. Accordingly the birth-rate curve of Salsette
Táluka is not shown in either of the two charts. The seasonal birth-rate of
rural Salsette is probably really better represented by the curves for the other
tálukas. In Captain Higham's charts for the decennium 1901-1910 those all
show a continuous rise from  between 24 and 34 per thousand per annum in
February to between 44 and 58 in May. This high birth-rate is maintained in
June, but there is a rapid and a uniform  decline to between 32 and 39 in July.
There is some further almost uniform decline in September, nearly all  the
tálukas having then a birth-rate of 28 to 32 per thousand per annum. With
a slight but nearly uniform rise in November, and an exactly corresponding
fall in December, the rates remain about the same level till the beginning of
the rise after February. The Peint Táluka of the Násik District, which is
geographically a part of Thána District, shows this same peculiar curve, which
is not that of the other tálukas of the Deccan district of Násik, and which is not
accounted for by any seasonal migration of the population, for none takes
place in Thána District.
This relatively great height of a birth-rate, the mean of which, 34.21
per 1,000 for the decennium, is not high for an Indian district, in the months
of March to June, would appear to connote a relatively increased virility in the
months of June to September. As the phenomenon is not observed in the
Deccan it must depend on something which influences the Konkani to a much
greater extent than the Deccani.
There is one thing that the inhabitant of the Deccan knows little of,
and that is the extraordinary difference which the presence or absence of the sea-
breeze makes to the vitality of the inhabitant of the Konkan. If a reference
is made to the meteorological figures at the foot of chart No. 1 it will be seen
how closely this period of relative virility coincides with the monsoon, how it
suddenly begins with the access of velocity in the sea-breeze in June, and the
appearance of the southerly element, and how it ends as abruptly in October
when the wind shifts round from the West to the North and the Malaria
season sets in.