168 THE DESCENT OF MAN. [Part I. 



Celts — and in a dozen generations five-sixths of the popu- 

 lation would be Celts, but five-sixths of the property, of 

 the power, of the intellect, would belong to the one-sixth 

 of Saxons that remained. In the eternal * struggle for 

 existence,' it would be the inferior and less favored race 

 that had prevailed — and prevailed by virtue not of its 

 good qualities but of its faults." 



There are, however, some checks to this downward 

 tendency. We have seen that the intemperate suffer from 

 a high rate of mortality, and the extremely profligate 

 leave few offspring. The poorest classes crowd into towns, 

 and it has been proved by Dr. Stark from the statistics of 

 ten years in Scotland, 20 that at all ages the death-rate is 

 higher in towns than in rural districts, "and during the 

 first five years of life the town death-rate is almost ex- 

 actly double that of the rural districts." As these returns 

 include both the rich and the poor, no doubt more than 

 double the number of births would be requisite to keep 

 up the number of the very poor inhabitants in the towns, 

 relatively to those in the country. With women, mar- 

 riage at too early an age is highly injurious ; for it has 

 been found in France that " twice as many wives under 

 twenty die in the year, as died out of the same number 

 of the unmarried." The mortality, also, of husbands un- 

 der twenty is " excessively high," 21 but what the cause of 

 this may be seems doubtful. Lastly, if the men who pru- 

 dently delay, marrying until they can bring up their 

 families in comfort, were to select, as they often do, wo- 

 men in the prime of life, the rate of increase in the better 

 class would be only slightly lessened. 



It was established from an enormous body of statistics, 



20 'Tenth Annual Report of Births, Deaths, etc., in Scotland,' 1867, 

 p, xxix. 



21 These quotations are taken from our highest authority on such 

 questions, namely, Dr. Farr, in his paper " On the Influence of Marriage 



