16 On Anthropological Forecasts. [January, 
“ further evolution in the most highly evolved of terrestrial 
beings,” “ augmented bulk ” may form a feature — smaller 
dimensions not being apparently an admitted possibility. 
To deny that man may become bigger than he is would be 
to lay just such a claim to a superhuman acquaintance with 
his future environment as has been deprecated above. But 
although such knowledge is unattainable, attention may be 
drawn to the fadt that man’s present outward circumstances 
appear to favour a reduction of his bulk ; and indeed it can 
hardly be doubted that in our manufacturing towns consi- 
derable progress has already been made in that direction, — 
man in this respeCt following the example set to him by a 
vast number of other genera. 
As compared with those of the animal kingdom at large, 
human dimensions are prodigious — a million times greater 
than those of the creatures which, at least in regard to 
social qualities, rank next to him. The drawbacks to such 
massiveness in beings which have to move themselves over 
a planet, at the surface of which the attraction of gravita- 
tion is so great as it is on this globe, are clear enough ; but 
the evils attendant thereon have been, as far as concerns 
man’s development in the past, more than counterbalanced 
by other considerations, chief among which was warfare, 
personal and tribal. During all the ages in which woman 
was the objeCt of violent contention, a capacity to deliver a 
blow from a greater height (and with consequently accele- 
rated speed and corresponding force) than lay in the power 
of an opponent, was of sufficient importance to a candidate 
for feminine favours to counterbalance many disadvantages 
resulting from ponderosity. (Indeed so soon as our hirsute 
ancestors were sufficiently advanced to wield a club with the 
right arm, the attainment of the eredt posture — if not 
already reached — must have been greatly expedited by this 
one consideration.) It is probably on this account that good 
height in man, in order to gratify our inherited aesthetic taste 
on the point, must be from the shoulder downwards, and 
must not be chiefly consequent on the possession of a long 
head and neck. For the same reason, too, boys, though not 
taller than girls up to the age of about thirteen, shoot up 
above them as they approach the age at which their fore- 
fathers fought with their right aims. The prevalence of the 
use in battle of weapons of precision, in the place of arms 
which gave due advantage to personal strength, must, on 
the contrary, tend to reduce human stature, each bullet 
being the more likely to fulfil its mission the bigger the man 
against whom it is despatched. The general substitution of 
