  The photometric and spectroscopic data of the CFRS survey of objects with
17.5 < I_{AB} < 22.5 are combined and analysed. The overall completeness is
85%. The redshift histogram of the sample is presented for 591 field galaxies
with secure redshifts. The median redshift is z = 0.56, and the highest
redshift observed is z = 1.3; 25 galaxies have z > 1 The distributions of
magnitudes and colors demonstrate that galaxies at these high redshifts have
very similar colors to those observed locally. The survey thus represents a
major improvement in our knowledge of field galaxies at large look-back times.
Only ~1% of the galaxies are as compact as stars (on images with FWHM ~ 0.9")
and comparisons of the photometric and spectroscopic data show that only one
galaxy was initially incorrectly classified spectroscopically as a star, and
only two stars were misclassified as galaxies. It is demonstrated that the
redshift distributions in the five fields are statistically consistent with
each other, once the reduction in the effective number of independent galaxies
due to small-scale clustering in redshift is taken into account.
  The photometric properties of the spectroscopically-unidentified objects
indicate that most are likely to be galaxies rather than stars. At least half
of these must have the same redshift distribution as the identified galaxies,
and a combination of magnitudes, colors and compactness of the remaining
unidentified galaxies is used to predict their redshifts. The majority are
probably ordinary galaxies at the high redshift end of our sample, including
some quiescent galaxies at z > 1.0, rather than some new or unusual population.
