Sex and Society | Page 2

high as compared with lower altitudes in the same locality. Ploss has pointed out, for instance, that in Saxony from 1847 to 1849 the yield of rye fell, and the birth-rate of boys rose with the approach of high altitudes. More boys are born in the country than in cities, because city diet is richer, especially in meat; Düsing shows that in Prussia the numerical excess of boys is greatest in the country districts, less in the villages, still less in the cities, and least in Berlin.[6] In times of war, famine, and migration more boys are born, and more are born also in poor than in well-to-do families. European statistics show that when food-stuffs are high or scarce the number of marriages diminishes, and in consequence a diminished number of births follows, and a heightened percentage of boys; with the recurrence of prosperity and an increased number of marriages and births, the percentage of female births rises (though it never equals numerically that of the males).[7] More children are born from warm-weather than from cold-weather conceptions,[8] but relatively more boys are born from cold-weather conceptions. Professor Axel Key has shown from statistics of 18,000 Swedish school children that from the end of November and the beginning of December until the end of March or the middle of April, growth in children is feeble. From July-August to November-December their daily increase in weight is three times as great as during the winter months.[9] This is evidence in confirmation of a connection between maleness, slow growth, and either poor nutrition or cold weather, or both. Professor Key's investigations[10] have also confirmed the well-known fact that maturity is reached earlier in girls than in boys and have shown that in respect of growth the ill-nourished girls follow the law of growth of the boys. Growth is a function of nutrition, and puberty is a sign that somatic growth is so far finished that the organism produces a surplus of nutrition to be used in reproduction. Organically reproduction is also a function of nutrition, and, as Spencer pointed out, is to be regarded as discontinuous growth. The fact than an anabolic surplus, preparatory to the katabolic process of reproduction, is stored at an earlier period in the female than in the male, and that this period is retarded in the ill-nourished female, is a confirmation of the view that femaleness is an expression of the tendency to store nutriment, and explains also the infantile somatic characters of woman. Finally, the fact that polyandry is found almost exclusively in poor countries, coupled with the fact that ethnologists uniformly report a scarcity of women in those countries, permits us to attribute polyandry to a scarcity of women and scarcity of women to poor food conditions.
This evidence should be considered in connection with the experiments of Yung on tadpoles, of Siebold on wasps, and of Klebs on the modification of male and female organs in plants:
According to Yung, tadpoles pass through an hermaphroditic stage, in common, according to other authorities, with most animals.... When the tadpoles were left to themselves, the females were rather in the majority. In three lots the proportion of females to males was: 54-46, 61-39, 56-44. The average number of females was thus about fifty-seven in the hundred. In the first brood, by feeding one set with beef, Yung raised the percentage of females from 54 to 78: in the second, with fish, the percentage rose from 61 to 81; while in the third set, when the especially nutritious flesh of frogs was supplied, the percentage rose from 56 to 92. That is to say, in the last case the result of high feeding was that there were 92 females and 8 males.[11]
Similarly, the experiments of Siebold on wasps show that the percentage of females increases from spring to August, and then diminishes. We may conclude without scruple that the production of females from fertilized ova increases with the temperature and food supply, and decreases as these diminish.[12]
Nor are there many facts more significant than the simple and well-known one that within the first eight days of larval life the addition of food will determine the striking and functional differences between worker and queen.[13]
It is certainly no mere chance, but agrees with other well-known facts, that for the generation of the female organ more favorable external circumstances must prevail, while the male organ may develop under very much more unfavorable conditions.[14]
These facts are not conclusive, but they all point in the same direction, and are probably sufficient to establish a connection between food conditions and the determination of sex. But behind the mere fact that a different attitude toward food determines difference of sex lies the more fundamental--indeed, the real--explanation of the fact, and this chemists and physiologists are not at present