Editorial note — APPENDIX.

“In these islands, at the time of the Norman conquest, the average of man was doubtless superior, both in body and mind, to the average of man now, simply because the weaklings could not have lived at all; and the rich and delicate beauty, in which the women of the Eastern Counties still surpass all other races in these isles, was doubtless far more common in proportion to the numbers of the population.”—Kingsley.

Is it a fact that the English of eight centuries ago were both mentally superior and more robust than ourselves? If the Spartans gained in physique by the destruction of their weaklings, many a genius in embryo may have perished on Mount Taygetus. “The survival of the fittest” is a physical principle only. Of old—as even now—the weak died of indigence. Sir D. Brewster says of Newton, “That frail tenement which seemed scarcely able to imprison its immortal mind, was destined to enjoy a vigorous maturity, and to survive even the average term of human existence.”