96 A. STRA.DLING ANNIVEESAEr ADDRESS : 



There are many points of positive evidence of this, too technically 

 anatomical to be brought forward here ; but one may say briefly 

 that races present their signs of growth, maturity, senility, and 

 decay, just as do individuals. Indeed, an American statistician 

 has recently published a computation that, at the present ratio of 

 increase, the extreme limit of population of the globe will bo 

 reached in the year 2072 — no more than 178 years hence — by 

 which time the earth's inhabitants will number 5994 millions, 

 more than which it will not hold or support. I believe that the 

 average proportion, taking the world over, so far as can be ascer- 

 tained, is seventeen births for sixteen deaths, but this proportion 

 varies greatly in different lands ; in France, for instance, according 

 to the census recently issued, there were in 1892 more than 20,000 

 deaths in excess of the number of births. It is extremely unlikely, 

 however, that man will persist to the limits of possible population 

 of the earth — which is not by any means the same thing as saying 

 that he will become extinct before the suggested 178 years have 

 elapsed, but rather the reverse, as no doubt unknown and at 

 present unknowable factors of determination will arise in the 

 meantime. We must not forget that there are tracts of land, 

 even in Canada and the United States, Alaska and Labrador, which 

 are less known at this period than equal areas in the moon ; and 

 that the future colonization of air and water may not be altogether 

 chimerical. We must remember, too, in connection with this part 

 of the question, that man, though encompassed by an infinitely 

 greater variety and complexity of conditions than any other 

 animal, has infinitely greater control over those conditions, by his 

 employment of engines, his choice of food and clothing, and other 

 modifications of his environment at will. As to his anticjuity, we 

 have but uncertain data, so far as years are concerned. We know 

 of course that he is a very baby amongst the Mammalia, quite 

 their latest product, just as the serpent is amongst reptiles ; that 

 in fact he did not appear until long after the wane of mammalian 

 life had set in ; and that he can be but a very transient phenomenon 

 on the face of the globe, even though his existence be reckoned by 

 thousands of centuries, when we compare him with such creatures 

 as the catfish of the Missouri, which has persisted in its present 

 form unchanged since the Siluiian epoch. Sir Charles Lyell predi- 

 cates the presence of man in the valley of the Mississippi for at 

 least 100,000 years, and the traces upon which this estimate is 

 founded would demand a period quite three times as long to 

 admit of his perfect evolution and differentiation into races. But 

 extinction is vastly quicker in its operation in all cases than 



