NATURAL SELECTION IN MAN 189 



as their age at death increased from 45 to 65-70 years and then to 

 decrease somewhat. " Childless women and mothers of extremely 

 small families have shorter expectation of life than mothers of 

 moderate sized families." With families of more than six children 

 the mother's expectation of life diminishes. In a memoir by 

 Beeton and Pearson it is remarked: "I [K. P.?] think, therefore, 

 that we can no longer talk of natural selection as an hypothesis. 

 It is in the case of man demonstrably at work either changing in a 

 quantitatively definite manner his constitution as a whole or else 

 necessary to keep that constitution stable. It is now not correct 

 to say as Lord Salisbury said in 1894 of natural selection ' No man, 

 so far as we know, has ever seen it at work.' It is sensibly and 

 visibly at work; a factor in 50 to 80 per cent of the deaths in the 

 case of man is not a slight perturbation ... it is something we 

 run up against at once, almost as soon as we examine a mortality 

 table." 



Attempts have been made to demonstrate the workings of 

 natural selection by studying the changes occurring in the human 

 population of limited districts. Among the most extensive inves- 

 tigations in this field are those of 0. Ammon upon the inhabitants 

 of Baden. The people of this duchy were held to consist mainly 

 of two racial elements, a relatively tall, blond, blue-eyed, dolicho- 

 cephalic "Germanic" race, and a small, dark-haired, dark-eyed, 

 round-headed "mongoloid" race. The long-headed types were 

 found to prevail more in cities and towns than in the country, and 

 the older urban inhabitants were found to be more dolichoceph- 

 alic than the recent ones. The long heads being the more intelli- 

 gent, superior stock tended to supplant the round heads in the 

 cities where the struggle for position depends more than in the 

 rural districts upon the possession of superior mental and moral 

 qualities. It is the dolichocephalic, according to Ammon, that 

 form the aristocratic race, fitted by their superior endowments to 

 form a ruling caste. They are found in greater numbers in the 

 higher walks of life and they are relatively more abundant hi the 

 higher than in the lower grades of the gymnasia. In the migra- 

 tion of peoples from the country to the city which it is assumed 



