PROPORTION OP THE SEXES. 



this proportion has been found to be maintained from year to year, 

 and equally in different departments. 



From a comparison of the births in different departments of 

 France, north and south, it has been found that the proportion of 

 the sexes born is not affected by climate. 



32. It must not be supposed, however, that this ratio between 

 the sexes continues through life. The chances of life being more 

 favourable on the whole to females than to males, the excess 

 given to the latter at birth is equalised before the middle age; and 

 at more advanced ages, the balance turns the other way, and the 

 females predominate. 



33. In coming into the world, the infant can open the eyes, 

 but physiologists consider that it has no sense of vision, and that 



- it is only at the end of some weeks that it begins to be sensible of 

 visible objects. After this, it directs its looks to objects which 

 are most brilliantly illuminajted, or which are characterised by 

 the most-vivid colours. It then, by slow degrees, begins to dis- 

 tinguish objects around it, but it has been ascertained that a 

 considerable time elapses before it has any idea of distances or 

 magnitudes. 



Indeed, this is quite consistent with effects which have been 

 found to result from surgical operations in which sight has been 

 restored to persons blind from infancy. In such cases, it has been 

 stated that the subject of the operation, when first enabled to see, 

 imagined that all the objects which he beheld were in immediate 

 contact with his eyes, and had not the least idea of their relative 

 distances, nor any other notions of their magnitudes or forms 

 than such as were afforded by their profiles. Every object, in 

 short, appeared as a coloured silhouette in close contiguity with 

 the organs of vision. 



34. The other organs equally undergo a progressive improve- 

 ment by exercise. During five or six months the infant makes no 

 other vocal sound than inarticulate cries. It begins gradually to 

 be sensible of pleasurable emotions from the contemplation of 

 external objects, which are expressed by its smiles. The cries 

 gradually assume the tone and character of the voice, and are 

 accompanied by incipient efforts at articulation, and towards the 

 close of the first year the more simple monosyllabic words are 

 pronounced. 



35. The bones, which at the time of birth consist to a great 

 extent of cartilage or gristle, and have no strength sufficient to 

 support the body, receive, in the process of nutrition, a gradual 

 accession of the earthy constituent called the phosphate of lime, 

 which gives them hardness. Contemporaneously with this 

 increase of strength in the bones, there is a proportionate growth 



71 



