Figure 1 shows the +conception losses in marriages of varying conception numbers+ (Curve A, Hamburger's working-men's families; Curve B, Bluhm's well-to-do families); both curves confirm Hamburger's words that "the percentage of the survivors gets smaller in proportion as the conception number increases." The mounting of Curve B in the families with ten births is probably a delusion brought about by a very small number. In the marriages with eleven or more births there are lost with the well-to-do one quarter and with the working-classes nearly two-thirds of the conceptions up to the twentieth or sixteenth year respectively.
Figure 2 represents the +share which miscarriages and premature births have in the conception losses in marriages of different degrees of productiveness+ (Curve A, Hamburger; Curve B, Bluhm). Amongst the Berlin labouring classes on the average 17.89 per cent. of all conceptions are lost through miscarriage and premature birth; for the wealthier German families the figure is 7.59 per cent.
Figure 3 shows the +share which deaths and stillbirths have in conception losses+. With the labouring classes it amounts on the average to 32.75 per cent. (Curve A), and in the wealthier families to 10.55 per cent. (Curve B).
Figure 4. To investigate whether the continuous decrease in the percentage of the survivors, going hand in hand with the increase of maternal conceptions, is caused by the constitutional inferiority of the offspring as the numerical position increases, Bluhm has established, in dealing with her material, the loss for each numerical position (first, second, third, etc., conceptions respectively). If this were the case, Curve A, which gives the loss according to the frequency of conception in each marriage, would have to be identical with Curve B, which gives the loss of first, second, and third, etc., conceptions, but this is by no means the case, for only at a very high numerical position of the conception the curves begin to be parallel. This proves that Hamburger's "the percentage of the survivors gets smaller in proportion as the conception number increases" is not a biological law but only expresses a social phenomenon. With the increasing number of children there is a decrease in the value of each individual childlife. The mother is less careful about avoiding miscarriages; she devotes, and must necessarily devote, less care to each child; and the risk of infectious diseases which are a frequent cause of death during infancy increases.