CHAPTER XVIII. 



LATE MARRIAGES I THEIR EFFECT UPON THE CHILDREN. 

 " Filii ex senibus nati, raro sunt firmi temperamenti." 



SCOLTZIUS. 



DR. MARRO fixes tlie period of decadence in fathers 

 at from forty years onward. M. Korosi, after inquiry 

 in 24,000 cases, says above forty, fathers tend to 

 beget weak children. The most healthy children have 

 mothers below the age of thirty-five. During the year 

 1889 no fewer than 11,516 men of forty- five to 

 upwards of eighty-five years of age were married, 

 and 11,148 women of forty to eighty years became 

 wives in England and Wales. Of these wives 3,472 

 were fifty or more years of age, and from these pos- 

 terity will suffer small injury. But the marriage of 

 the remaining 7,676 women of between forty and 

 fifty, and 11,516 men already some way on the down- 

 ward path to decay, must have a great and gravely 

 injurious effect upon the generation in which their 

 offspring shall appear. 



Just as the immature parent who has not reached 

 perfect development produces a degenerate offspring, 

 so the elderly parent, the tide of whose vitality is 

 on the ebb, brings forth children more or less 



