580 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



fore she was twenty-one. In the decade that ended the first century 

 of New South Wales the proportion of married women under that 

 age fell from 28.17 to 23.55 per cent; in less prosperous Victoria, 

 after only half a century, it fell from 21 to 17.4; in New Zea- 

 land there was a big drop from 29.4 to 19.7. The proportion of 

 married women under twenty-five has also seriously declined. The 

 decrease is noticeably correspondent with the increased number of 

 young women who are gaining their own livelihood — largely as 

 teachers and typewriters. On these lines the colonies are following 

 the lead of the mother country. Long engagements, followed by late 

 marriages with fewer children, take the place of short engagements 

 with hasty marriages and larger families. Female celibacy is no 

 longer dishonorable, and women are beginning to understand that 

 they may be far happier single and self-supporting. The quality of 

 marriage improves with its rarity. "When an Australian M. A. 

 marries an M. A., or the most brilliant of New Zealand professors 

 marries one of his most distinguished students, we feel, as when a 

 Dilke marries a Pattison, that the ideal of the union has been realized. 



The growth of the colonial house follows the development of the 

 family and repeats the history of the race. The immigrant procures 

 his abode, as he afterward buys his clothes, ready made. The an- 

 cient troglodyte lives to-day in the Derbyshire cave dweller; the 

 original Romanist settlers of Maryland were driven to take refuge in 

 cave houses in Virginia; and the New Zealand hermit, like "great 

 Pasan's son " at Lemnos, " weeps o'er his wound " of the heart in a 

 cave by the resounding sea. Where they can not be found ready dug 

 they can be excavated, as they were by some early Pennsylvania 

 colonists. Others in Virginia, New York, and New England found 

 it easier to dig holes in the ground, thus imitating the Germans of 

 Tacitus, whose winter residences are also repeated in those basements 

 which form the wholesome abode of the London domestic servant. 

 The wattle-and-daub house of the Anglo-Saxon villager has been 

 everywhere reproduced in the colonies, and may still be abundantly 

 found. 



If the occupation of caves and the burrowing of holes suggests 

 man's distant affinity to the carnivora and lower quadrupeds, his 

 simian origin is confirmed by the use he makes of the tree. In the 

 infant city of Philadelphia there were " few mansions but hollow 

 trees." A rude form of tent is the next stage, the canvas consisting 

 (as may still be seen among the poorer campers-out) of clothes or 

 rags. Then, as in the early days of Sydney, the tents were covered 

 in with bushes and thatched over. Next (as may to-day be observed 

 in the neighborhood of Coolgardie) a framework of branches is em- 

 ployed to support the canvas, and the tent is converted into a cabin. 



