scuss the
causes involved, but it is necessary to take into account for the
immediate future the fact of the change.

Sidney Webb has recently published an account of the birth-rate
investigations undertaken by the Fabian Society with a view to
determine the causes leading to the rapidly falling birth rate in
England. During the decade previous to 1901 the number of children in
London actually diminished by about 5,000, while the total population
increased by about 300,000. As far as they bear upon this phase of the
subject his results fully confirm these we have been considering. The
falling off is chiefly in the upper and middle classes, in the classes
of thrift and independence, and it has occurred chiefly during the
last fifty years. Webb cannot find that this is due to any physical
deterioration in these classes; it is due to a conscious and
deliberate limitation of the size of the family for what are thought
prudential and economic reasons.

An actual reduction in the number of children may not be an unmixed
evil. A falling birth rate may be a good sign. This is partly a
question for the political economist. "Suicide" may be a socially
fortunate end for some strains. But when, in either a rising or a
falling birth rate, we find a differential or selective relation, then
the subject is eugenic. If the higher birth rate is among the socially
valuable elements of each different class the Eugenist can only
approve; to bring about such a relation is one of his aims. What we
really find, however, is the undesirable elements increasing with the
greatest rapidity, the better elements not even holding their own.

One further aspect of the result of the smaller family remains to be
considered. Are the various members of a single family approximately
similar in their characteristics or are the earlier born more or less
likely to be particularly gifted or particularly liable to disease or
abnormal condition? Or is there no rule at all in this matter? There
is much evidence that the incidence of pathological defect falls
heaviest upon the earlier members of a family. Consider, for example,
the presence of tuberculosis. We should ask, in families of two or
more, are the tubercular members, if any, as likely to be the second
born or third or tenth as to be the first born? The data are tabulated
in Fig. 11, _A_. The distribution of family sizes being what it is in
the number of families investigated and tabulated, we should ex