Coeducation and Marriage 



45 



live girls don't get to be seniors. The 

 freshman class always has the prettiest 

 girls." 



The percentage of graduates who 

 marry from the women's separate 

 colleges of the East appears to vary 

 from 40 to vSO, in most instances being 

 nearer the smaller figure.^ None of 

 the coeducational institutions here con- 

 sidered shows as low a rate as this. 

 Direct comparison is not legitimate, 

 because each college represents a differ- 

 ent social and geographical environment. 

 The marriage rate, not only of college 

 graduates but of all other women, may 

 be lower in the East than it is in the 

 West. 



Furthermore, the percentage of gradu- 

 ates who marry is onl}^ one item of a 

 number that must be considered by 

 eugenics. In any discussion of the 

 relative merits of the separate colleges 

 and coeducation, it is important to 

 know which group of women marries 

 at the earlier age, which gets the 

 better mates, which has the larger 

 number of children and which brings 

 the greater number of children to 



maturity. Data on these points are 

 not now available. 



There is no reason for surprise that 

 the marriage rate of women from even 

 the highest college should be low, when 

 it is remembered that a good deal of 

 selection has taken place before women 

 go to college, as well as during the course 

 of the college career. Many of those 

 who take college degrees are girls to 

 whom marriage is unattractive, or who 

 are through some mental or physical 

 characteristic not likely to find hus- 

 bands, and who are, therefore, put bv 

 their parents into a "career." These 

 girls woiild not have married in any 

 case; therefore their chances were not 

 impaired by a college education. In 

 the case of many other girls, however, 

 it is a serious question whether a college 

 education is not mainly responsible 

 for their failirre to marry. Reasons 

 have been set forth in previous issues 

 of the Journal of Heredity for think- 

 ing that this is more true of the sepa- 

 rate women's colleges than of the co- 

 educational institutions. 



Hindu Ideas on Heredity 



THE SACRED BOOKS OF THE HINDUS, 

 Vol. XVI. The Positive Background of Hindu 

 Sociology, Book I. By Prof. Benoy Kumar 

 Sarkar, with appendices by Dr. Brajendranath 

 Seal. Pp. 365. Price Rs. 6. Allahabad, the 

 Panini office, 1914. 



Prof. Sarkar's volume, dealing prin- 

 cipally with the ethnology", mineralogy, 

 botany and zoology' of the Sanskrit 

 literature, offers many interesting 

 glimpses of primitive science. His at- 

 tempt to show that the early Hindus 

 possessed considerable knowledge of 

 plant-breeding is hardly successful, al- 

 though it is certain that they were 

 familiar with such processes as grafting. 

 In an appendix on Heredity, Dr. Seal 

 says that the early Sanskrit scientists 

 held a view of evolution corresponding 

 to the emboitement theory, that Charaka 

 had put forth an hypothesis almost 



identical with Darwin's hypothesis of 

 pangenesis, and that the isolation of the 

 germ-plasm was well understood. The 

 idea of continuity of germ-plasm was 

 never reached, although it logically 

 followed from the views held. It was 

 clearty recognized that a character, to 

 be inherited, must originate in the 

 germ-plasm, not in the body, and the 

 non-inheritance of acquired characters 

 was explained by this very good hypoth- 

 esis. Speculative views on evolution 

 appear to have been shrewd, ape-like 

 forms being designated as man's ances- 

 tors, while it was also pointed out that 

 man's ancestors must at one time have 

 been aquatic. The author believes that 

 Hindu philosophers must be recognized 

 as having long antedated the Greeks 

 in the foundation of biological science. 



* For the details see Sprague, Robert J., Education and Race Suicide. Journal of 

 Heredity, Vol. vi, pp. 158-162. The methods of compilation vary with each college. The 

 marriage rate at Mount Holyoke appears to be only 41.9, at Br>'n Mawr 4.19, at Vassar 49%. 



