Evening star., 1899-04-08

rate is also progressively diminishing.
Some have ascribed the diminution to les
sened fertility; others consider it to be due
to "a voluntary curtailment or the family
Herbert Spencer by arguing that indi-
vidlsal evolution Is in antagoniSm TO the
procreative faculty"
Although some of these reasons may suf-
f1ciently account for the excessive decline
in the birth rate in a neighboring country,
so far as the statistics of England ana
Wales are concerned none OF these con1ec-
lures have any weight If other conditlons
OF life remain the same a diminishing plrtn
rate is a necessary accompaniment OF
lengthening youthfulness. For the defer
ment of the marriage age OF splnsters VIII
certainly prolong that range of time, ex-
tending from a womans birth to the Dlrth
of her first child, the scientific definition
of generation. Consequently in any given
period of time of sufficient length there Will
be fewer of the longer generations than Of
the shorter ones. In the present case the
birth rate of England and Wales has dimin-
lshed from 31.4 the thousand in 1887 to
29.4 in 1898. We observe that the ratio of
the marriage age of spinsters under forty
years of age in 1897 to that of 1886 is as
LOST to l. This of itself would make the
ratio of the birth rate in 1887 to that in
1888 approximately 1.0S7 to 1. As mat
ter of fact, we find the ratio is as LOGS to
l. The comparison of these ratios shows
I'd that the deferment of the marriage age
and the consequent lengthening of gener-
alton play by far the greatest part in de-
creasing the birth rate and (2) that other
causes together act against this decrease,
making it less than it otherwise would be
without them.
The SIum Population.
The population of Great Britain is for the
most part an amalgamation of many
breeds; and it happily possesses few prom
nent racial characters. In all large towns.
however, there is a section of the fnhabi-
tants mainly recruited from the failures,
the ne er-do-wells, and the debauchees of
other classes who herd together in ill-ven-
tnated and overcrowded slums Stunted
In their growth and precocious in their
minds, the children form breed of them
serves, and supply inmates for our peni-
tentiaries and our infirmaries, a constant
source of anxiety to philanthropiSts. By
degraded social and domestic habits these
people contract alliances with the oppos-
lie sex at an early age. Their shortened
adolescence, enta1liRg as 1t does a high
birth rate, renders the decrease in the rate
less noticeable than it otherwise would
have been. In aristocratic England We
nave other frfnges of society, wherein
youthful precocity is foStered and adoles-
cence curtailed by early and exclusive mar
riages between kinfolk. These social var
1ants together tend by their somewhat SIM
liar habits to neutralize the lowering eff
feet of the prolonged adolescence of the
Modern Conditions.
Since, as 1 have already stated, among
domestic animals the longest lived varieties
are. as a rule, the slowest to mature, we
ought to expect from analogy some evil
dences of mans increasing longevity, if
the progressive expansion of mis- adolescent
period is a genuine factor of modern civil
lized life.
There is no doubt that the middle arch
of life has during the past half century
risen from little over forty years to about
fifty years. Much of this Improvement is
due to modern sanitation and the lessened
death rate from preventable disease conse-
quert thereon We now know that many
common tokens of old age, as, for instance
joint stiffness, loss of teeth and badness,
are due mainly to the operations of noXious
microbes and as such may occur almost
at any age Strict personal cleanliness and
healthy surroundings will 90 far to check
their introduction into our bodies. Yet al
though we admit that sanitation has both
improved the expectation of life among the
young and the middle-aged, and has also
diminished the signs of decrepitude among
the old people, there nevertheless remains
the remarkable fact that our veterans show
by their daily work in many cases, not
merely freedom from the common all
Inents of senility, bur a retention of youth
ful buoyancy and energy sufficient to up
hold distinguished reputation, despite the
active competition of younger men. OF all
old-tlne musicians, from Bach to Rossini
LeW reached the age of seventy years;
Verdi in his eighty-fifth year, still fills the
world with tuneful melody.
Few popes have lived so long as Leo
Kill None have equaled him at eighty
seven in energy and determination of char
dcter. Among scientists we have still with
US Pag9t, Kelvin, Lister, Firchow, Becque-
rel, and many others, doing good work and
with whom in many cases four score years
have failed to quench the hidden fire Of
eloquence. We can hardly match in tie
ballads OF bygone generations the verses of
an octosenarian Whittier d Tennyson, or
Holmes, poets whose deaths the world
still mourns- l need not multiply examples
our old people are admittedly mora Youth
ful and take a more active interest in the
AFFAIRS of life than their forebears did at
the same age. Coincidently then, with the
prOlOnSatiOn of mans adolescence we find
lessened birth rate and indications of the
progressive deferment of the attributes of
senility. And although our lives do not
lengthen so rapidly our youthfulness ex-
pandS. yet We may reasonably expect our
children to live longer than We do This is
not, however, the chief result to be antici-
pated from these changed racial conditions
Ihe one of far more Importance 10 the in
div1dual and to the nation will be that our
chlldrens children will retain '.the rose of
youth unfaded far longer than we NAV
hope to now.