SOME ASPECTS OF THE BIOLOGY OF HUMAN POPULATIONS 53 1 



Steady progress was interrupted to a degree sufficient to 

 be apparent upon only two occasions during the three 

 quarters of a century. These were in 1847- 1849 ^^^ 1890- 

 1892. These fluctuations, which only shghtly aff"ected the 

 even upward trend of the curve, were apparently due to 

 the influenza pandemics of 1847- 1848 and 1 890-1 891. 



The broad result is perfectly clear and outstanding. The 

 population of England and Wales is today exhibiting a 

 greater purely biological survival value as a whole population 

 than it was three-quarters of a century ago. Whether it is a 

 mentally, morally or anthropometrically fitter population 

 does not now concern us. We are dealing here solely with the 

 fact that, taking the people of England and Wales as a 

 whole, slightly over two babies were born for every death 

 per year in 1920, as against 1.4 babies per death per year in 



1838-1839; 



Now this result will strike any one informed as to the 

 sociological and eugenical literature of the last two decades 

 as curiously at variance with the pessimistic tenor of that 

 literature, taken* as a whole. It has been pronounced from 

 high places that the general trend of British people was 

 biologically downwards, that they were in fact becoming 

 a decadent race. Abundant quotations in support of this 

 contention could be cited, were space available and were it 

 necessary. This gloomy view has had its foundation mainly 

 upon the fact that, since the quinquennium 1875-1880, 

 the birth rate in England and Wales has been falling rather 

 rapidly, as is clearly shown in Figure 2. This fact has been 

 studied by Miss Elderton in great detail. 



But from a purely numerical viewpoint, what matters a 

 falling birth rate if the death rate falls even more rapidly, 

 so that the net survivorship at any instant of time is con- 

 stantly getting higher? To this it will, of course, be answered 

 at once by those who view with alarm the declining birth rate 

 that the real crux of the matter is in the diff"erential change in 

 fertility. Nowadays the "best" people are said not to produce 

 their due share of progeny, while the "worse" people are 

 alleged to overproduce. In the American population, how- 

 ever, the writer (1924 Chap, viii) has shown that the element 

 perhaps least effectively integrated socially with the rest of 



