H.—ANTHROPOLOGY. 205 
on the mentality and character of the individual—the youth with the 
best mind and good will should gain the advantage and be favoured in 
his prospects of a successful marriage, through which he could transmit 
these qualities to further generations. 
Turning to the genetic aspects of the subject, it is clear that the future 
of the nation depends on the interaction of two somewhat opposed pro- 
cesses, reproductive and lethal selection. Fecundity is a heritable trait, 
and parents who themselves are members of large families tend to produce 
many offspring who, in their turn, are similarly prolific. Lethal selection, 
on the other hand, counteracts this tendency in that the demands of a 
large family reduce the chances of the parents protecting themselves or 
their offspring, since the available care has to be distributed over a larger 
number. It will be noted that the shorter the intervals between successive 
births, the higher is the rate of infant and child mortality. 
The materials for any investigation into changes in density of popu- 
lation are very scanty until the decennial censuses can be consulted. 
While there are reasons to think the country was by no means sparsely 
occupied in early days, there are no, even approximate, estimates until 
the fourteenth century, when the population of England and Wales is 
believed to have been about three million. There was a slow rise to six 
and a half at the middle of the eighteenth century, thence on a growth 
to nearly nine million at the first census of 1801, sixteen million in 1841, 
and twenty-six in 1881. After this the rate was retarded, and in 1921 
the population was approximately thirty-eight million. The period of 
rapid growth coincided with the industrial development of the early 
nineteenth century, the slowing down with the rise of competition from 
abroad. 
It is important to note that the increase of population was not uniformly 
distributed, either as to district, class, or occupation. In the earlier days 
the greatest density of population was, in the main, south of the line 
from the Severn to the Wash but extending up to Lincolnshire and the 
East Riding, and the predominant occupation was agriculture. A change 
began with the great development of pasture and the relative abandonment 
of arable land which reached its height in early Tudor times, when Hyth- 
loday could be represented in ‘ Utopia’ as saying: ‘ Your shepe that were 
wont to be so meke and tame and so small eaters, now, as I heare saye, 
be become so great devowerers and so wylde, that they eate up, and swallow 
downe the very men themselfes. They consume, destroye and devoure 
whole fieldes, howses and cities.’ 4? This process reduced the numbers, 
especially in the eastern counties and the southern midlands. Some two 
centuries later the rise of industrialism in northern areas adjacent to water 
power and coal led to a great increase of numbers in marshy and moorland 
districts which had formed the refuge of a scanty and often pre-Nordic 
population. 
The areas of highest fertility to-day are the northern counties and 
Wales, while the lowest are found south of the line from the Severn to the 
Wash ‘4; probably the difference is mainly due to social and industrial 
rather than to racial factors. The rural population is the more fertile ; 
“8 Thomas More, Utopia, Bohn’s ed., bk. i., p. 38. 
44 Census of England and Wales, vol. xiii., pt. ii. 
