184 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



EQUALITY AND INEQUALITY IN SEX. 



By G. DELAUNEY. 



THE sentimental pretensions put forward by a political school which 

 holds that woman is intellectually the equal of man, give a char- 

 acter of actuality to the question of the comparison of the sexes. This 

 question, which it has been the custom to treat from a metaphysical 

 point of view, is to us purely anthropological, or rather zoological ; 

 for we propose to show by characteristic examples borrowed from the 

 whole animal kingdom that sexuality undergoes the same evolution in 

 all species, including the human species. The female surpasses the 

 male in certain inferior species. The males are smaller than the 

 females among many cephalopods, and among some cirripeds. With 

 a few exceptions, the superiority of the females prevails among the 

 annelids, and among certain articulates, as bees, hornets, wasps ; and 

 female butterflies are larger and heavier than males, a difference being 

 observable even among the larva?. A like superiority of females may 

 be observed in many fishes, as in the cyprinoids, and in reptiles. This 

 is, however, no longer the case among the superior vertebrates. The 

 males of birds and mammals are nearly always superior to the females. 



To sum up, the two sexes, at first unequal in consequence of the 

 superiority of the female over the male characterizing the lowest spe- 

 cies, become equal among species a little more elevated in the animal 

 scale, and become unequal again in consequence of the pre-eminence 

 of the male over the female, which is observed in all the higher species. 

 The supremacy of the female is, then, the first term of the evolution 

 which sexuality undergoes, while the supremacy of the male is the last 

 term. Let us now see wherein the superiority of the male is mani- 

 fested. 



The nutritive phenomena in birds and mammals, including the 

 human species, are more intensive in the male than in the female. 

 The blood is denser, redder, contains more red globules and hemiglo- 

 bine (Quinquand, Korniloff), fewer white globules, and less water. M. 

 Malassez has found a million more red globules in a cubic millimetre 

 of man's than of woman's blood. Man eats more than woman. Public 

 charities recognize that it costs more to feed a boy than a girl. But, 

 though she eats less, woman is more of a gourmand (Brillat-Savarin), 

 and eats more frequently, being oftener pressed by hunger. Women 

 in the cities eat between-meals, like children. In asylums for the 

 aged, where women are not allowed more meals than men, they ab- 

 stract food from each meal to eat in the intervals, so as to double the 

 number of their meals. 



The respiratory phenomena of men are also stronger than those of 

 women. The pulmonary capacity of a woman is a pint less than that 



