FAMILY RELATIONS 127 



and capacity to provide well and liberally and for a 

 longer period, then the females and offspring had a 

 chance to grow stronger, healthier, and better fitted 

 for the struggle for existence, and those families, 

 therefore, had the best chance of survival. 



Nor does the matter end even here. For it can 

 hardly be doubted that, in that epoch, the unre- 

 strained reproductive instinct and the necessities of 

 the race admitted of but short intervals, for the com- 

 petent among the females, between the end of the 

 helpless infancy of one child and pregnancy with the 

 next; so that natural selection would sift out only 

 those families for preservation in which the males 

 were naturally disposed to provide for their females 

 and offspring, as long as the reproductive period of 

 the female and the helplessness of any of the off- 

 spring lasted. 



