Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/36

 28 The differences in stature which, are traceable to this influence of city life are considerable. The town population of Glasgow and Edinburgh offers an extreme example wherein the average stature has been found to be four inches less than the average for the suburban districts. The people, at the same time, are on the average thirty-six pounds lighter. Dr. Beddoe, the great authority upon this subject, concludes his investigation of the population of Great Britain by this statement: "It may therefore be taken as proved that the stature of men in the large towns of Britain is lowered considerably below the standard of the nation, and as probable that such degradation is hereditary and progressive."

On the other hand, it must be confessed that this unfavorable influence of city life is often obscured by the great social selection which is at work, as we shall hope to show later, in the determination of the physical type of the population of great cities. While the course of the town type by itself is downward, often-times the city attracts another class which is markedly superior, in the same way that the immigrants of the United States have been distinguished in this respect. Taking London as a whole, the stature of its people is apparently above the level of the surrounding districts, despite the unfavorable influences of urban life. At the same time the suburban counties about London are marked by a standard below the average. This follows, probably, from the great selective process by which all of the better types of the rural population are continually being drawn off into the vortex of city life. The effect of it is, of course, to increase the average stature of the town population, taken as a whole.

It would be interesting to inquire in how far the relative height of the sexes is due to a similar selective process. Certain it is that among us, in civilization, women average from three to four inches below men in stature, a disparity which is considerably less among primitive peoples. Dr. Brinton has invoked as a partial explanation, at least, for this, the influence of the law of sexual division of labor which obtains among us. This law commands, in theory, that the men should perform the arduous physical labor of life, leaving the more sedentary portion of it to the women. If the conscious choice of mates had followed this tendency, its effect would certainly be unfavorable to the development of an increasing stature among women, while it might operate to better the endowment of men in that respect. It is impossible, in the time at our command, to follow this out. Probably this difference of stature between the sexes is partially due to some other cause which stops growth in the woman earlier than in the man. The problem is too complex to follow out in this place.

From the preceding array of facts it will appear that in stature we have rather an irresponsible witness in the matter of race. A