H.— ANTHROPOLOGY. 141 



which our London medical students serve as examples have been brought 

 up to, or nearly up to, the limit which their race will reach under the 

 most favourable conditions. It may be indeed that the more intensive 

 health crusade of the last two or three years may cause a new rise in 

 stature which has not yet had time to show itself, but I can see no signs 

 of it as yet. It may be, too, that, though environment may have played 

 its last card, heredity may not have done so, and that if for any reason 

 the individuals with a higher percentage of Nordic traits in their patch- 

 work composition are put in a more favourable position to marry and 

 beget offspring than those with a large number of Alpine and Mediterranean 

 traits, the stature may rise still further. 



I feel sure, however, that there is a certain average height beyond which 

 the purest Nordic stock will not rise, and my belief is that this has been 

 reached, or nearly reached, already — so far as the higher classes are 

 concerned. 



I am taking no account, of course, of whether there is any advantage 

 to a nation, or to the world at large, in its citizens reaching a very high 

 average stature. Personally I doubt whether, in these modern days of 

 machinery, the losses do not outweigh the gains ; for great mental ability 

 seldom accompanies great bodily size, nor as a rule are very big and 

 muscular men such good lives, from a medical point of view, as their 

 more slimly built and wiry fellows. It seems that, while we do well to 

 notice and" record the increasing size of our upper and middle class men, 

 we have no great reason to be proud of it. Be this as it may, there can 

 be little doubt that, as all classes come to take an equal share in the 

 benefits of Eugenics, the height of the whole community will increase 

 until 5 ft. 9 in. is the average height of the poorest as well as of the richest ; 

 though in those parts of the country in which the Mediterranean element 

 is greatest the stature no doubt will be lowest. 



I have given my reasons for believing that we have learnt how to 

 raise our male stature to a point beyond which it will not go, and beyond 

 which it is not well that it should go ; but what of the women ? About 

 twenty years ago I measured the height of some 150 students of the School 

 of Medicine for Women, and found their average to be 5 ft. 3 in., but after 

 ten years their successors had added a fraction over an inch to their 

 stature ; while this year I have measured 150 nurses and massage students 

 at St. Thomas's Hospital whose average height was 5 ft. 4-9 in. 



Now these girls belong to the very same class of the community as 

 the male medical students ; indeed there are brothers and sisters in the 

 two groups, and the difference with which they have reacted to altered 

 conditions is quite interesting ; for, whereas the boys had reached their 

 full average height of 5 ft. 9 in. when first I measured them twenty years 

 ago — and their successors, year by year, have never added anything to, 

 or lost anything from, this height, up to the present — their sisters have 

 gained very nearly 2 inches in the twenty years, and practically have 

 reached the height of the average Englishman, whom we dare not estimate 

 as measuring more than 5 ft. 5 in. There are no signs, moreover, that 

 these healthily nourished girls have reached their maximum, as have 

 the boys. 



So far as heredity goes, I know that their Anglo-Saxon forbears 



