45? POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



are of tlie rough-and-readj type still to be met witli in English 

 country districts — men wlio have picked up their knowledge in 

 the course of practice, and are better qualified to treat the diseases 

 prevalent in simple than in more advanced communities. 



VI. The '' male cells are always more anarchic, usually mature 

 before the female elements, and even in plants, and in such passive 

 animals as a sponge or a hydra, burst from the organism, while the 

 female cells remain in situJ^ * It is in accordance with all organic 

 evolution that the male leads and the female follows. Male birds 

 earlier migrate. The first Greek emigrations were exclusively of 

 the male sex. Even the organized colonization of Cyrene was 

 womenless. The northern invaders, having fighting to do, were 

 solely men. No women went out with the first expeditions to !N^ew 

 Spain. There were few women in early Virginia. There were few 

 in ISTew France for long, nuns excepted. The two colonies sent out 

 to Darien consisted respectively of twelve hundred and thirteen 

 hundred men. It is males that are wanted in a new country. Only 

 men could fight the battle the early colonists have to fight; ham- 

 pered by women, they would fight it worse or not at all. Heroines 

 like the wives of La Tour, Dupleix, and many an unknown settler 

 are equal to men, but women of a softer stamp suffer greatly and 

 eventually succumb. !Nor are they imperatively required; there 

 are native women for the first immigrants, who are not as a rule 

 squeamish. As the conditions assimilate to those of older countries, 

 the proportions change. In a newly settled pastoral country the 

 males are as ten to one. In older pastoral countries complicated with 

 newly discovered mines, like West Australia, they are still as two to 

 one. The emigration to New South Wales in 1831-'37 was of one 

 hundred males to thirty females. The emigration from Great Britain 

 at this day continues predominantly male, but only in the proportion 

 of ten to seven. 



VII. The age of the reproductive cells must be left in the 

 obscurity in which it lies. Parent birds migrate before the young, 

 but it is probably the more active and the less old of these that are 

 the first to leave. The law remains operative to the last. The 

 first emigrants are fighting or toiling men at their best. As colonial 

 life grows easier, older and younger members of families join the 

 stream. In rare cases an aged father and mother are brought out by 

 a son who has thriven. Still (if observation may be trusted), nine 

 tenths of emigrants are under forty-five, and two thirds of them are 

 under thirty-five. Manhood in its prime and womanhood in its 

 bloom form the core of all emigration. White heads are singular in 

 youthful communities. 



* Geddes and Thomson. Evolution of Sex, p. 241. 



