524 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL chaf. 



system of education and of public opinion here suggested 

 there can be no doubt how this selection would be 

 exercised. The idle and the selfish would be almost 

 universally rejected. The diseased or the weak in intellect 

 would also usually remain unmarried ; while those who 

 exhibited any tendency to insanity or to hereditary 

 disease, or who possessed any congenital deformity would 

 in hardly any case find partners, because it would be con- 

 sidered an offence against society to be the means of 

 perpetuating such diseases or imperfections. 



We must also take into account a special factor 

 hitherto, I believe, unnoticed in this connection, that 

 would in all probability intensify the selection thus 

 exercised. It is well known that females are largely in 

 excess of males in our existing population, and this fact, 

 if it were a necessary and permanent one, would tend to 

 weaken the selective agency of women, as it undoubtedly 

 does now. But there is good reason to believe that it 

 will not be a permanent feature of our population. The 

 births indicate a natural tendency in the opposite 

 direction, since they always give a larger proportion of 

 males than females, varying from 3 J to 4 per cent. But 

 boys now die so much more rapidly than girls that when 

 we include all under the age of five the numbers are 

 nearly equal. For the next five years the mortality is 

 nearly the same in both sexes ; then that of females pre- 

 ponderates up to 30 years of age, then up to 60 that of 

 men is the larger, while for the rest of life female mortality 

 is again greatest. The general result is that at the ages 

 of most frequent marriage — from 20 to 35 — females are 

 between 8 and 9 per cent, in excess of males. But 

 during the ages from 5 to 35 we find a wonderful excess 

 of male deaths from two preventible causes — " accident " 

 and " violence." For the year 1888 the deaths from these 

 causes in England and Wales was as follows : — 



Males (5 to 35 years) 4,158 

 Females (5 to 35 years) 1,100 i 



Here we have an excess of male over female deaths in 

 Annual Report of the Registrar- General, 1888, pp. 106-7, 



