276 THE DESCENT OF MAN. 



ton Hough accounts for these facts in part by the more 

 frequent defective development of males than of females. 

 We have before seen that the male sex is more variable in 

 structure than the female ; and variations in important 

 organs would generally be injurious. But the size of the 

 body, and especially of the head, being greater in male 

 than female infants is another cause; for the males are thus 

 more liable to be injured during parturition. Consequently 

 the still-born males are more numerous; and as a highly 

 competent judge, Dr. Crichton Browne,* believes male 

 infants often suffer in health for some years after birth. 

 Owing to this excess in the death-rate of male children, 

 both at birth and for some time subsequently, and owing to 

 the exposure of grown men to various dangers and to their 

 tendency to emigrate, the females in all old-settled coun- 

 tries, where statistical records have been kept,f are found 

 to preponderate considerably over the males. 



It seems at first sight a mysterious fact that in different 

 nations, under different conditions and climates, in Naples, 

 Prussia, Westphalia, Holland, France, England and the 

 United States, the excess of male over female births is less 

 when they are illegitimate than when legitimate.! This 

 has been explained by different writers in many different 

 ways, as from the mothers being generally young, from the 

 large proportion of first pregnancies, etc. But we have 



Deaths, etc.', in Scotland." 1867, p. 28) that "These examples may 

 suffice to show that, at almost every stage of life, the males in Scot- 

 land have a greater liability to death and a higher death-rate than 

 the females. The fact, however, of this peculiarity being most 

 strongly developed at that infantile period of life when the dress, 

 food and general treatment of both sexes are alike, seems to prove 

 that the higher male death-rate is an impressed, natural and consti- 

 tutional peculiarity due to sex alone." 



* " West Riding Lunatic Asylum Reports." vol. i, 1871, p. 8. Sir 

 J. Simpson has proved that the head of the male infant exceeds that 

 of the female by three-eighths of an inch in circumference and by 

 one eighth in transverse diameter. Quetelet has shown that woman 

 is born smaller than man ; see Dr. Duncan, " Fecundity, Fertility, 

 Sterility," 1871, p. 382. 



f With the savage Guaranys of Paraguay, according to the accu- 

 rate Azara (" Voyages dans I'Amerique inerid ," torn, ii, 1809, pp. 60, 

 179) the women are to the men in the porportion of 14 to 13. 



\ Babbage. "Edinburgh Journal of Science," 1829, vol. i, p. 88; 

 also p. 90, on still-born children. On illegitimate children in En- 

 gland, see " Report of Registrar-General for 1866," p. 15. 



