NOTES. 



43 » 



opment of species, and their value to the 

 biological student depends, not so much 

 on their being of the highest organism, as 

 on the paleontological sequence by which 

 their history is capable of being established. 

 In the same way existing laws, institutions, 

 and arts, wherever they are found in their 

 respective stages of perfection, are to be re- 

 garded simply as existing strata in the de- 

 velopment of human life, and their value 

 from an anthropological point of view, de- 

 pends on the faciUties they afford for study- 

 ing their history. The arts of life are of 

 paramount importance, because they admit 

 of being arranged in cases by means of 

 antiquities in the order in which they were 

 actually developed. 



The Haman Struggle for Existence— 



The Malthusian theory was the subject of 

 a discussion at the British Association. A 

 paper by Mr. Edwin Chadwick went to show 

 that, where wages increase, the pressure of 

 population on means of subsistence is dimin- 

 ished ; that, instead of the cost of produc- 

 tion of land being fixed, it is generally re- 

 ducible by science and machinery, while the 

 amount of production may be everywhere 

 y augmented ; and that, instead of pestilence 



being a natural check on population, it does 

 not diminish its pressure, but serves to 

 weaken the population and diminish its pro- 

 ductive power and increase its pressure on 

 the means of subsistence. The author could 

 not descry the limits of a further advance 

 of prosperity in the country with a further 

 increase of population. Mr. Park Harrison 

 thought that war was not an unmixed evil 

 as a factor of population, and that it was 

 interesting to note the care we took at pres- 

 ent at vast expense to enable miserable 

 specimens of humanity to survive and in- 

 crease that part of the population which is 

 really the main element of the unemployed. 

 The members of society thus produced were 

 perfectly incapable subjects, carefully nursed, 

 and brought up as if they were going t oin- 

 herit large estates. Natural selection should 

 be allowed to have fair play. It was inter- 

 fering with the laws of nature to do so much 

 in the direction of perpetuating the survival 

 of the unfittest. Mr. W. L. Bros said that 

 in old times war, by the operation of the 

 rules that prevailed, eliminated the weakest 



members of society ; but, by the system of 

 fighting in the nineteenth century, the soldier 

 should be a picked man of the community. 

 The population, therefore, which suffered 

 from war lost its best, not its worst mem- 

 bers. War also added largely to the dis- 

 proportion in the numbers of the sexes, and 

 meant the prevalence of many social irregu- 

 larities which tended to degrade the com- 

 munity as a whole, and to cause the survival 

 of a lower type. Sociologists believe that 

 the commercial competition of the present 

 day is acting very much as war used to act 

 in earlier days. The strong, the competent, 

 and the mentally and physically efficient are 

 succeeding in the struggle for life ; the fee- 

 ble in mind and body and in resources are 

 being eliminated by industrial competition. 

 It is desirable, in the interests of the health 

 of the community, that this competition con- 

 tinue. Another speaker maintained that the 

 children of the working classes did not, as a 

 rule, contribute to the lazy population of the 

 country. A poor man with six daughters 

 practically owned a fortune, because they 

 could become useful servants ; and if he had 

 three or four sons, the young men could 

 obtain work if capable for it. It was the 

 middle and higher classes who contributed 

 to the surplus and lazy population. This 

 could be seen by the large number of gen- 

 teel young men who every day crowded after 

 a vacant clerkship. Parents should not be 

 afraid to bring up their sons to learn a use- 

 ful handicraft. 



NOTES. 



The statistics of the Japanese Empire for 

 1887 show that commercial enterprise is 

 developing there in a remarkable degree. 

 The foreign trade of the country has in- 

 creased more than 86 per cent in ten years. 

 In connection with the addition of 151 miles 

 of railway to the 3*70 miles before built, the 

 pertinacity with which the Japanese insist 

 upon furnishing their own capital, and not 

 borrowing from abroad, is remarked upon. 

 Naval stations are building at Kune, Naga- 

 saki, and Tauchina Island. A system of 

 water-works has been completed at Yoko- 

 hama, while such concerns were wholly un- 

 known under the old system; 111 commer- 

 cial and industrial companies were formed 

 last year in Tokio, Osaka, and Kioto, having 

 an aggregate capital of $21,500,000; and 

 in ail, shares to the extent of more than 

 $71,000,000 taken up by the people. 



