140 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



conquered, and are bound to be swept away before long ; for all this 

 improvement is gathering speed as it rolls on, and each year has rather 

 more to show than that which went before. 



I have been visiting lately a number of the London County Council 

 schools in order to see something of the physical characteristics of the 

 rising generation, and I find that, even in the poorest districts, the children 

 are, upon the whole, cheerful and fairly healthy, and a wonderful under- 

 standing exists between them and their teachers, who as a class are far 

 above the pedagogues under whom I sat as a boy ; while in the secondary 

 schools, particularly in the healthier districts, such as Plumstead and 

 Eltham, the physical beauty and perfect health of the boys and girls 

 contrast very favourably with anything that our most expensive public 

 schools have to show. It is true that I am speaking from the examination 

 of only five thousand out of more than a million London children, and 

 may have to modify my opinion as time goes on ; but what I have seen 

 fills me with hope for the future, and never again shall I grudge any 

 taxes which I may be called upon to pay for education, since I realise 

 that, under the cloak of education, London at least is doing its utmost to 

 change a C3 into an Al population. 



And now, feeling sure that a change is coming over our younger 

 generation, let us try to see where it is leading, and whether heredity or 

 environment is taking the greater share in guiding it ; though we shall 

 surely be wrong if we allow either of these great influences to leave our 

 minds for a moment. I must be careful not to undertake more than I 

 can carry through in my time ; and therefore I will only ask you to let 

 me say a little about the three physical characteristics of stature, colora- 

 tion and head shape, in order to see whether anything may be learnt from 

 these. 



I suppose that no one would dare to say what the average height of 

 the modern Englishman is, because we have no State-controlled and 

 State-aided means of sampling the physical conditions of our population 

 in any way. I can tell you at first hand that the men of our labouring 

 and agricultural classes in the Chilterns average 5 ft. 6 in., and that the 

 mixed classes in a North Kent doctor's practice are 5 ft. 7 in. ; but what 

 we do not know is how much the stunted millions in the Midland manu- 

 facturing towns, and the mass of unemployed and unemployable humanity 

 in the East of London, will pull this down. I suppose that, taking these 

 into consideration, the average height of the Englishman to-day is not 

 more than 5 ft. 5 in. ; though when we speak of the well-nourished classes 

 there is a different tale to tell. I know, for instance, that for the last 

 twenty years my students at St. Thomas's Hospital have averaged 5 ft. 9 in. 

 and in no single year have they ever risen as high as 5 ft. 10 in. or dropped 

 below 5 ft. 9 in. ; but, steady though their average at this height has been 

 for twenty years, I am quite sure that they are taller than were my own 

 contemporaries forty years ago, just as those contemporaries, in their 

 turn, were probably taller than the originals of Bob Sawyer's and Ben 

 Allen's fellow-students, who walked the Borough hospitals nearly a century 

 ago. 



I think, therefore, that hygiene and better nutrition have done their 

 work so far as stature is concerned, and that the class of Englishmen of 



