140 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



is extended to classes, nations, and races, 

 who are assumed to be unequal and incapa- 

 ble of attaining to an equal degree of per- 

 fection. The author divides men into four 

 classes, in the first of which he places those 

 possessed of creative and initiative faculties 

 above their fellows, while it is to the rela- 

 tive numerical preponderance of this class 

 over the others that he refers the undoubted 

 superiority of one race to another. He 

 thus sees in the dolichocephalic blondes the 

 most famed of all the races of humanity, 

 since, from the dawn of history, all heroes 

 and leaders among men have belonged to 

 this type. In modern times the Anglo- 

 Saxon race has owed its superiority to the 

 preponderance of the dolichocephalic ele- 

 ment. France is supposed to be suffering 

 from the diminution of this type in its 

 population, together with the rising prepon- 

 derance of the brachycephalic type to which 

 the lower classes of the community belong, 

 while a great deterioration of the general 

 personal character through the amalgama- 

 tion of the two is anticipated as inevitable. 

 Similarly the author sees in the present 

 movement for raising the negro races a 

 source of future danger to the Aryans, 

 who may in time find themselves beaten 

 down by the brute force of teeming masses 

 of inferior brachycephalic peoples. 



A Stoker's Life. The stokers on one of 

 the great ocean steamers work four hours at 

 a stretch, in a temperature ranging from 

 120 to 160. The quarters are close, and 

 they must take care that while feeding one 

 furnace their arms are not burned on the 

 one behind them. Ventilation is furnished 

 through a shaft reaching down to the mid- 

 die of their quarters. Each stoker tends 

 four furnaces, spending perhaps two or 

 three minutes at each, then dashes to the 

 air-pipe to take his turn at cooling off, and 

 waits for another call to his furnaces. 

 When the watch is over, the men go per- 

 spiring through long, cold passages to the 

 forecastle, where they turn in for eight hours. 

 One man, twenty-eight years old, who was 

 interviewed by a reporter, had been em- 

 ployed at the furnaces since he was fourteen 

 years old. He weighed a hundred and 

 eighty pounds, and was ruddy and seem- 

 ingly happy. lie confessed that the work 



was terribly hard, but " it came hardest on 

 those who did not follow it regularly. But 

 if we get plenty to eat," he said, " and 

 take care of ourselves, we are all right. 

 Here's a mate of mine, nearly seventy 

 years old, who has been a stoker all his 

 life, and can do as good work as I can. 

 Stokers never have the consumption, and 

 rarely catch cold. Their grog had been 

 knocked off on the English and American 

 lines, because the men got drunk too often, 

 and the grog did them much harm. When 

 I used to take my grog, I'd work just like 

 a lion while the effects lasted. I'd throw in 

 my coal like a giant, and not mind the heat 

 a bit ; but when it worked off, as it did in 

 a very few minutes, I was that weak that 

 a child could upset me. Take a man dead 

 drunk before the fires, and the heat would 

 sober him off in half an hour, or give him 

 a stroke of apoplexy." 



Disparity in Marriage. The ft West- 

 minster Review " shows that the widows 

 greatly exceed the widowers in number, the 

 proportion in England being as 1,410,684 to 

 589,644 a proportion which is not very 

 greatly varied from through all the marriage- 

 able ages. The difference being hardly ac- 

 counted for by the superior longevity of 

 women, or the greater exposure to dan- 

 ger incurred by men, the " Review " finds a 

 more efficient cause in marital disparity. 

 Women prefer husbands who have made 

 their fortunes and can give them ease and 

 display, to young men who have their for- 

 tunes to make, with privations that must be 

 shared. Thus taking companions considera- 

 bly older than themselves, they naturally 

 outlive them. It might be a more philo- 

 sophical proceeding for the woman to marry 

 a man younger than herself, that she may 

 have his society through life, and a support 

 when she will most need him. The results 

 of this course to the cause of purity and to 

 the health of the human race are to be de- 

 plored. Disparate unions have been shown 

 to be fertile sources of the failure of mar- 

 riage. A young woman marrying a man of 

 like age is the right person in the right 

 place. On the contrary, in marrying a man 

 at the end of his manhood, she often drags 

 him down. " Gross disparity was forbidden 

 by Jewish lawgivers, and also by the most 



