14 galton.org
14
Inquiries into Human Faculty
and partly classified and published a large amount of facts, besides having
induced several institutions, such as Marlborough College, to undertake a
regular system of anthropometric record. I am not, however, concerned
here with the labours of this committee, nor with the separate valuable
publications of some of its members, otherwise than in one small
particular which appears to show that the English population as a whole,
or perhaps I should say the urban portion of it, is in some sense
deteriorating. It is that the average stature of the older persons measured
by or for the committee has not been found to decrease steadily with their
age, but sometimes the reverse.
[1]
This contradicts observations made on
the heights of the same men at different periods, whose stature after
middle age is invariably reduced by the shrinking of the cartilages. The
explanation offered was that the statistical increase of stature with age
should be ascribed to the survival of the more stalwart. On
reconsideration, I am inclined to doubt the adequacy of the explanation,
and partly to account for the fact by a steady, slight deterioration of
stature in successive years; in the urban population owing to the
conditions of their lives, and in the rural population owing to the continual
draining away of the more stalwart of them to the towns.
It cannot be doubted that town life is harmful to the town population. I
have myself investigated its effect on fertility (see Appendix B), and
found that taking on the one hand a number of rural parishes, and on the
other hand the inhabitants of a medium town, the former reared nearly
twice as many adult grandchildren as the latter. The vital functions are so
closely related that an inferiority in the production of healthy children
very probably implies a loss of vigour generally, one sign of which is a
diminution of stature.
Though the bulk of the population may deteriorate, there are many
signs that the better housed and fed portion of it improves. In the earlier
years of this century the so-called manly sports of boxing and other feats
of strength ranked high among the national amusements. A man who was
[1]
Trans. Brit. Assoc., 1881, Table V., p. 242; and remarks by Mr. Roberts, p. 235.
