The Growth of Children. 11 



been strangely neglected, though, in all questions rehxting to 

 the growth and development of the race, its importance is at 

 least equal to that of the male sex. The only accessible 

 observations on girls, except those of Quetelet, seem to have 

 been made in Great Britain. Quetelet himself quotes* the 

 following observations made by Cowell among the lower 

 classes of the population of Manchester and Stockport, by 

 which it appears that the relative size of the two sexes varies 

 very much, as in this community. The curves on Plate V 

 show the rate of growth of the factory operatives of both 

 sexes, the values of the ordinates being taken from the above 

 tables. It will be seen that these curves, though rather 

 irregular, owing to the small number of observations from 

 which they are constructed, are very different in their charac- 

 ter from those given by Quetelet, a discrepancy to which this 

 author, however, does not allude. 



Through the kindness of Mr. C. Roberts, of London, the 

 writer has obtained manuscript tables showing the height and 

 weight of children of both sexes in various classes of the 

 community. From these records it is evident that in Eng- 

 land girls of 13 years of age are, as a rule, taller and heavier 

 than boys of the same age. 



It must, therefore, be assumed either that children in 

 Belgium grow in accordance with a different law from that 

 which is found to prevail in England and with us, or that 

 Quetelet's tables and curves do not truly represent average 

 heights and weights. A consideration of the method by 

 which Quetelet's results were reached renders the latter 

 assumption not improbable. It will be noticed that Quetelet 

 nowhere gives the number of observations on which his aver- 

 age results are based. He speaks, to be sure, of his investi- 

 gations having extended over a quarter of a century, f and 

 yet he accounts for the small differences between the maxi- 

 mum and minimum heights for the different ages (averaging 



* Sur I'Homme, II, 19 and 51 ; Original Observations in Parliamentary Reports, 1833, 

 XX,Dl,p. 87. t Anthropom6trie, p. 178. 



