2i 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



four tenths of one per cent of women are so. None of the popular 

 explanations of this difference are at all adequate. The differ- 

 ence is a constitutional one between the sexes in this era, and is 

 no doubt one of the forms of the greater variational tendency 

 in man. 



The general opinion that women are superior to men in manual 

 dexterity seems to be borne out neither by actual experiment nor 

 by accurate observation of woman's work in the mechanical arts. 

 Experiments by Dr. Bryan on rapidity of movements with seven 

 hundred and eighty-nine school children showed that the rate was 

 slightly greater with boys at every age from five to sixteen years, 

 except at the age of thirteen. The same experiments showed that 

 rapidity increased regularly with age. Bryan also made experi- 

 ments in precision of movements, with the result that there was 

 little difference between the sexes, the figures showing a slightly 

 greater precision for boys. Gilbert's painstaking and accurate 

 experiments upon voluntary motor ability in twelve hundred 

 school children in New Haven, including fifty girls and fifty boys 

 for each year from six to seventeen, gave practically the same re- 

 sults. The tests were based upon the number of taps that could 

 be made in five seconds with the finger. The boys excelled at 

 every age without exception. The average number of taps in five 

 seconds for boys was 29'4, for girls, 26'9 ; but the rate increased 

 in both sexes from an average of about twenty-one at six years to 

 thirty-four at seventeen years. Gilbert's experiments upon the 

 reaction-time of school children showed that the reaction-time of 

 boys was uniformly shorter at every age from five to seventeen, 

 and that the time in both boys and girls decreased uniformly with 

 age except a slight retardation at fourteen. In respect to dexter- 

 ity in the manual arts there is much conflicting testimony. Have- 

 lock Ellis's inquiries concerning woman's skill in laboratories, in 

 the cigar and cigarette trades, in cotton spinning and woolen weav- 

 ing, etc., led him to the result that with few exceptions the finer 

 and more dexterous work is done by man in fields where both 

 sexes have equal opportunities and practice. In the cigar and 

 cigarette trades of English manufacturing centers large numbers 

 of women are employed, but are set to the coarser and lower grades 

 of work, men being required to make the finer grades of cigars 

 and to fold the narrow margins of the cigarette papers. Instruct- 

 ors in laboratories in coeducational institutions with few excep- 

 tions pronounce the men to be far more skillful in the use of the 

 microscope and all other delicate instruments and to require less 

 direction in the prosecution of their work. The superiority of 

 women in needlework could not be adduced in this connection any 

 more than the superiority of men in many fields where women 

 have not entered into competition with them. 



