250 MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



The armed rhinoceros, or the Hyrcan tiger, 

 Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves 

 Shall never tremble : or, be alive again, 

 And dare me to the desert with thy sword ; 

 If trembling I inhibit thee, protest me 

 The baby of a girl." * 



This absence of courage and virility in the children 

 of the immature is well illustrated in the result of 

 Marro's investigations. He found that an astonish- 

 ingly large percentage of the insane and thieves were 

 the children of immature fathers, while the same 

 class was but poorly represented among murderers 

 and sexual offenders, where courage or ferocity and 

 animal vigour were necessary (vide page 262). 



Authorities are unanimous in agreeing that the 

 children of mothers under twenty, and of fathers 

 under twenty-four, are, as a class, less robust mentally, 

 morally, and physically, than children of parents in 

 their prime. M. Joseph Korosi, of the Buda-Pesth 

 Statistical Bureau, has made more extensive inquiries 

 upon this subject than any other investigator, and 

 his conclusions agree closely with those of Marro 

 and others, viz., that immature parents bring forth 

 a degenerate stock, in which the percentage of 

 idiots, cripples, insane, consumptives, criminals, &c., 

 is immensely larger than in the children of mature 

 parents. The most perfect, robust, and long-lived 

 children are those of fathers between twenty-five and 

 forty, and of mothers between twenty and thirty years. 



The late Dr. J. Matthews Duncan, who enumerated 

 * " Macbeth," Act III. Scene iv. 



