575. 89 
599.9 
if 
The Influence of Woman in the Evolution of the 
Human Race 
HE recent discussions of Mr Reid’s book, “The Present 
Evolution of Man,” in Natural Science (vol. x., pp. 184, 242, 
305, 393) have interested me, both on account of their able 
treatment of this subject from so many different sides and also 
on account of their omissions of certain points of view. Man’s 
place in nature, the possible influence on his destiny of the position 
he occupies as the terminal form of his own group, should, it seems 
to me, be given more consideration as a possible factor in his evolu- 
tion. This has received incidental consideration by the writer in 
connection with studies upon the phenomena of evolution among the 
Invertebrata, especially Cephalopoda, and the results are instructive 
and quite similar to those reached by the distinguished English 
palaeontologist, Mr S. S. Buckman. 
The way in which man’s position may possibly affect his 
evolution and further prospects has been treated by the writer in 
a lecture upon “ Woman’s Occupations and Habits and the Suffrage 
from a Biological Point of View.” This can be used as an example 
of a certain mode of treating the subject, and an abstract of this 
lecture may perhaps interest the readers of Natural Science. It is 
also appropriate that it should appear first in an English periodical, 
since, if the reports are true which reach this side of the ocean, some 
leading Englishmen are so sadly deficient in knowledge of the 
subject and its importance, that they consider the question of 
whether the suffrage shall or shall not be granted to women as a 
huge political joke rather than as a question dealing with matters 
of importance to the future evolution of civilised races. People do 
not yet recognise that the tendency of evolution is quite as often 
towards retrogression and extinction as in the direction of pro- 
gression ; the former indeed being the final result both in the life- 
history of the individual and of his family, and finally of the race to 
which he belongs. The laws of biology have not hitherto béen used 
to test the assumptions, that co-education and the changes of 
occupations and habits induced thereby and by the legal freedom of 
choice of occupation conferred by the use of suffrage upon women, 
will be beneficial factors in the evolution of the future. The writer 
has thus been endeavouring to call attention to this side of these 
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