no THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



lage in Massachusetts with one in Yorkshire, and what Mr. Young says 

 of American women lacking or losing form and beauty is more true 

 of the English example than the American. There are numbers of 

 English women, it is true, who show the type, at one extreme, to 

 which Mr. Young refers, but as you go from that extreme to the 

 other you find the middle type as much the rule in England as in 

 America, and the worn, thin, nervous type fully as common in Eng- 

 land as in America, and often more extreme here than in America. It 

 is life more than climate which produces this extreme, and life for 

 Englishwomen is worse than American in the whole lower range of 

 society, and in many sections higher up. 



It is quite erroneous for Mr. Young to talk of the drying, irritating 

 effect of American climate as compared with English. The drying, 

 irritating, corrosive effect of the east wind in the streets of London is 

 very much worse than anything known in America. It is a strong, 

 steady Siberian wind, which blows for weeks together, with a biting 

 power which I have seen entirely blacken the early leaves of the horse- 

 chestnut. In many seasons, judging by what I have seen myself, and 

 by many statements made by English writers, I should say that, in 

 bad seasons at least, the irritating effects of the English climate are 

 more than twice as bad as those of the American. At any rate, there 

 is no ground whatever for saying that American women are made thin 

 and English are not. More English women than American are made 

 very thin by the greater cruelty to women of English care and toil 

 and suffering. And, if more are kept stout, it is largely because the 

 stout type have stuck to the home soil, and very largely because of 

 beer added to beef. 



Mr. Young's conclusion as to America, that " the dry air produces 

 nervous, energetic, large-jointed skeletons, which have little or nothing 

 in common with the stout, fresh, rosy, phlegmatic inhabitants of the 

 mother-country," could not well be more wide of the mark. The type 

 which Mr. Young says is American was produced hundreds of genera- 

 tions ago ; and if Mr. Young chooses he can see in the north of England 

 a larger proportion of this type than he can find anywhere in America, 

 except those parts of the South where English and Scotch of this type 

 were numerous in the early colonies. Typical skeletons are not made 

 in a day, nor in seven or eight generations. I should say that, across 

 England by Manchester and Sheffield, the "nervous, energetic, large- 

 jointed," not stout, not rosy, and most emphatically not phlegmatic 

 men, are ten to one as numerous as anywhere in America. One sup- 

 poses that he has seen nervous energy in Chicago, but only in England 

 have I ever had my attention drawn to nervous energy almost gone 

 mad. The impression that the English are phlegmatic is a false infer- 

 ence from peculiar appearances. 



The exterior calm is very often that of suppressed temper, and the 

 outbreak of violent temper is very much worse and much more fre- 



