STERILITY OF THE CAPABLES. 



the race. The lower classes, less hampered by a sense 

 of prudence, contract marriages most freely, increasing 

 thereby the relative fertility of their class. While the 

 success of a woman in the upper classes who has several 

 daughters to dispose of is proverbially precarious, 

 we read that in the East End of London every girl in 

 the lowest classes can get married, and with hardly 

 one exception does marry. 1 Those in the upper classes 

 who marry at all do so, as already remarked, at a later 

 period. In verification of this fact we have not only 

 the statements previously adduced from the circum- 

 stances of every-day experience, but we also have 

 statistical information at hand in the Forty-Ninth 

 Report on Births, Deaths, and Marriages, where we 

 can find the average age of marriage given for a 

 variety of trades and occupations as follows : 



AVERAGE AGES AT MARRIAGE, 1884-85. 



We shall see from a study of this table that 

 marriage is contracted at a more advanced age by 



1 "Labour and Life of the People/' p. 472, by Miss Collett. 



