Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/495

Rh our male students, begun to show the expected results by a general increase of weight and stature, that has not yet been attained by our college women? Can it be true that our American women are beginning to show the material cost of attempting to build a highly organized brain and maintain their special physiological function at the same time? Although in primitive races the two sexes are almost always more nearly alike physically, perhaps the little contrast between the Cuban male and female teachers as compared with the contrast between the American male and female students, may be due to the superiority of the physique of the Cuban women in comparison with the physique of the Cuban men. This supposition is greatly strengthened by again comparing the difference in the medium weight of the Cuban male teacher with that of the American student. The latter is 20.5 pounds heavier than the former, which is even in excess of the amount which the American male exceeds the American female in weight. On the other hand, we find that the medium American female student exceeds the medium Cuban female teacher by 12.6 pounds, which is more than the average Cuban man exceeds the average Cuban woman. The weight of the Cuban man and the American woman is very nearly the same in all of the percentile grades, as will be observed in noticing the close proximity and correspondence of the curves in Chart No. 1.

The differences in height follow the same general trend as those in weight. (See Table No. 2.) There is a difference of 4 inches in the medium height of the Cuban man and the Cuban woman, while the difference between the American man and the American woman is 5.1 inches. In both nationalities there is less comparative difference between the small men and the small women and the large men and the large women, in point of height, in the various percentile grades, than there is difference in weight. The difference between the medium height of the American man and the Cuban man is 3.4 inches, while the difference between the medium height of the Cuban women and the American women is 2.3 inches. Here, again, in all the grades, the comparative differences in height were much less than the comparative differences in weight. In this respect it is interesting to note that most of the Cubans gained steadily in weight all the time they were in Cambridge, and many returned to Cuba in a better condition of health than when they came to the United States.

If we would inquire into the real cause of the diminutive stature and weight of the Cuban teachers of both sexes when compared with our student type, we must begin with the question of race. The agencies, conditions and environment that have been working for generations upon a people stamp their almost indelible effects upon them, and give them the physical characteristics which we readily