manifested itself not only in wooing and wedding, but in the inheritance, in ever-increasingly greater and greater degree, by female offspring of those physical attributes which made the mothers attractive. All this implies romantic love, relief from burdensome labor, and freedom from the care of providing subsistence for the family; all of which, as has been shown, are conditions favorable to the creation and conservation of beauty.

The dissonance produced by absence of beauty-producing conditions, when the forces just described are in abeyance, is exhibited by the characteristics of strong-minded women. With them the natural play for the instincts and emotions and energies of the softer sex having been denied, they make an order of beings apart from the attributes of either, but pertaining more nearly to the male than to the female sex. Sexual selection has generally stood them aside from relation to posterity. They are, for the most part, like the exceptional species of which mention has been made, where the female is the pugnacious element of the conjugal bond, wears the comb, spurs, and hackles of the opposite sex, and they are, when wedded, like similarly situated individuals of that species, in being followed by a crest-fallen mate, distinguished by feminine traits, who brings up the rear of all things in the battle of life.

It follows from what has been said that, if the character of the higher races does not change, and the physical conditions on earth do not change, and it is improbable that they will change for at least some millions of years, the beauty of women will go on increasing for a long time to come. Ease and comfort, as a whole, enjoyed by civilized peoples, have greatly increased all over the world within a hundred years, and as they are likely still further to increase, beauty will, through men's admiration of it, combined with these favorable conditions, go on increasing in amount and degree, and become proportionally prized. Summing up all the agencies at work among the higher

races as fruitful of increase of female beauty, we may well assume its further great development. These influences are men's devotion to it, women's lessened labor and care, their higher education, and their social development. These conditions must produce in turn romantic love, vigor of body, and maintenance of youthful appearance, amiability of expression, and the intellectual and spiritual graces of the countenance; all of which, in the aggregate, will mean increased beauty for the future.

CHAPTER IX.

THE EFFECT OF ENVIRONMENT AND TRAINING ON THE PHYSIQUE.

T will probably appear to the reader as if it would be impos

IT

sible for any marked change to take place in the human form during the short space of even the longest life-time. But, happily, the fact can be readily established by examination of probably the largest body in existence of accurate statistics on any one subject.

After the great civil war in America was over the government of the United States made a compilation of remarkable surgical and other matter, and collection of interesting and useful military material used in the war. Only one class, however, of that statistical information is that with which we have special concern. It must be remembered that, as the information was derived from investigations relating to a body of men numbering over a million, the idea is precluded of the error involved in generalizations from a few cases. The object of the introduction of the obtained information here, and some other which will follow, is to show that, if certain existing but not imposed conditions have produced determinate results on the body, then we have it in our power, by voluntarily imposing the same or similar conditions, to reproduce like results.

It was ascertained that, although the sailors enlisted in the war were, as a class, shorter than the soldiers as a class, their legs were longer than those of the soldiers by over inch. Their arms, on the other hand, being over an inch shorter than those of the soldiers, were disproportionately short as compared with the soldier standard, even after making due allowance for the difference in stature between the two classes. The sailors measured more around the neck and less around the waist and hips

than did the soldiers, and the sailors had higher insteps than the soldiers had. It was also discovered that men who had been born and bred in the Western States were taller than those born and bred in the Eastern States, and that residence in cities was prejudicial to height.

Some of our readers may be of sufficient experience to be able to make reflections for themselves on the basis of the points which have been noted. But, assuming that all have not that experience, it will be well here briefly to discuss some of them. The differences between the sailors and the soldiers could not have arisen from changed conditions during the war, for measurements are made upon enlistment. The facts are very striking, however, taken as they stand, showing that difference of occupation, with a slight infusion of heredity, can produce such differences. We say a slight infusion of heredity advisedly, because such is the shifting of occupation in modern times of son from father that there are rarely now, as formerly, occupations engaging even two successive generations of a family. The son of a sailor or of a soldier may be anything else, and is more likely to follow some other occupation than that of his father. The soldiers of whom we are now speaking were, at the time when they enlisted, not soldiers at all. At that period of time they represented merely landsmen drawn from a wide extent of country, and, to a certain degree, from different nationalities. The comparison, as it stood, was therefore simply between sailors, who are necessarily professional, and landsmen, who at that period were not soldiers nor at any subsequent period professional ones, though many became veterans as fine as any in the world. Each class therefore had acquired, more especially during the youth of its component individuals, characteristics which represent, in a general way, the aggregate effect on the body of occupation on land

or sea.

It was observed by every one during the war that, excepting