PHYSICAL EVOLUTION 225 



centres of population, and are to be bought there for a reasonable 

 price. Moreover the great rapidity and cheapness of ocean port- 

 age is helping a great deal to improve health in the most squalid 

 and crowded districts : oranges and bananas, being cheap as they 

 are, must be reckoned as an important means of health to the 

 poor. Sugar, partly through the continental bounty system, has 

 become cheap, and forms a most valuable item in the diet of poor 

 children. Much of it is used for jam making, that great and 

 growing industry, on which any one who is interested in the 

 welfare of the people ought to look with favour. To all this 

 we must add that epidemics in the present day are very mild 

 compared with their great predecessors. There are no visitations 

 like the Black Death in the fourteenth century, the Sweating 

 Sickness in the sixteenth, or the Great Plague in 1665. 



Improved drainage, vaccination, isolation and other means nip 

 epidemics in the bud, and rob them of half their terrors. There 

 is sometimes an outbreak of smallpox, such as the recent one at 

 Gloucester, which gives rise to much talk and some alarm, but 

 does not spread far. There is, moreover, a spirit of altruism in 

 the present day which leads the rich to help the poor, perhaps 

 more than ever before. Charity, both wise and unwise, is at 

 work in all directions, relieving hunger and distress. When a 

 strike threatens many families with misery, the philanthropic are 

 eager to subscribe for the help of the sufferers. " I have no 

 means of knowing which side is in the right, but I send l$ for 

 the workmen," so wrote a distinguished ecclesiastic during the 

 engineers' strike. " Puzzled but subscribing," to quote Lord 

 Beaconsfield, describes the attitude of the English people on a 

 great many occasions. Thus altruism, wealth, science all com- 

 bine to make the life of the poor easier. And to this we may 

 add that the State has relieved them of the burden of education. 



If I have correctly represented the general tendency, we Amount 

 ought to find evidence of it in the returns of the amount of 

 alcohol consumed annually in the United Kingdom from 1885 

 to 1897. Drink reflects the prosperity of the people. When 

 wages go up, more is drunk. In 1885 our people drank 27*1 

 gallons of beer per head annually. In 1897 the amount had 



