BRITISH ASSOCIATION

Greymouth Evening Star, 10 November 1931, Page 10

BRITISH ASSOCIATION

WARNINGS FROM SCIENTISTS. LONDON, September 27. Dangers of the depopulation of Europe, and other problems associated with the birth-rate and death-rate were discussed yesterday in the zoology section of the British Association. “Birth-control,” said Professor Julian Huxley, “is a new phenomenon of the first magnitude which is likely to affect all countries in the coming century. “As a result, even in the countries where over-population has been threatened, the next hundred years will probably bring the danger of depopulation.”

Professor Huxley said that there were certain fundamental differences between man and other organisms which needed to be stressed. “n animals,” he pointed out, “inherent fecundity has been roughly balanced by natural selection against the dangers of life and the length of life so as to give a working result. “Man has reduced the dangers of life—violent death, disease, fire, etc.— to such an extent that- his inherent fecundity is now excessive considered in relation to the biological function of keeping the population stable and even in relation to the aim of a reasonable growth of population.

“Another difference between man and animals is his faculty of deliberate and long-distance migration. “Another feature in which man differs from animals is a much greater range of natural variation in regard to fertility. As a result fertility, or any characters which happen to be or to become associated with it, will be subject to natural selection of far greater intensity than any normally occurring in wild animals.

BIRTH-CONTROL METHODS. “Man does not exercise his powers of reproduction to the full. Some restriction on population growth is found in all types' of human society. At its crudest this consists of infanticide. , . . . “In civilised societies this restriction is effected by the postponement of marriage, by a considerable proportion of the population remaining unmarried, by abortion, which is legalised only in Russia, and most importantly by deliberate birth-control methods. “The present situation is of peculiar interest. The possibility of large scale migration is rapidly coming to an end. So too is that of rapid expansion in many countries India, China, Britain, and Belgium—under economic conditions similar to those of the present day. “Thus we are faced with the problem of regulating the quantity of human numbers and preventing either over or under-population. “If, as it appears, most mutations are deleterious, we must find a means of inducing some type of artificial selection if degeneration is to b,e prevented. “Future censuses will have to ask questions of a type different from those asked at present.” DECLINE OF WEST. Outlining the history of human population, Professor A. M. Carr-Saun-ders (Liverpool) said that in 1650 the total population of the world was given as about 465 millions. The population now was a little less than 1,900 millions, so that there had been a four-fold increase in the population of the earth in 300 years. China, which still had no trustworthy census, probably contained one-fifth of the human race, and estimates of her population to-day differed- by as much as 100 millions. To-day the population in this country was not reproducing itself, and in America it was only just doing so. There was hardly any exception to the fact that decline in the birth-rate was confined to races of pure European descent. Races of European descent would cease to increase within, say, three generations. “In the lower economic strata of society,” said Professor Huxley, in a second speech, “the possession of a number of children is, on the whole, unfavourable to rising in the social scale in subsequent generations. “If a man is constantly coming on the State for relief, it might well be made a condition of relief that he should have no more children providing the means of preventing them are available. “The raising of wages brings down the birth-rate, and we have seen that a high economic status‘tends to bring down the birth-rate. “Some means should thus be found for decreasing the enormous differences which now exist between the incomes of different members of the community. There again we have a possibility of social and economic pressure to remedy the defect. “The raising of low wages and the bringing down of high salaries would be followed by compensating advantages for the children.”

MULTIPLE BIRTHS. Professor L. T. Hogben spoke about the possibilities of “multiple births” in the distant future. “Though it is probable that artificial limitation - has been the major agency in the recent decline of the birth rate in civilised countries, it may be pointed out that changes of personal hygiene and social habits have chiefly affected the countries and classes where the decline has been most pronounced. “It is evident from Bowley’s estimates that we are faced in the immediate future with a decline of the population, and not merely a decline of the birth-rate of Western Europe. Once such a decline has begun it is difficult to tell how far it may proceed before we discover, if we do discover, the meants of arresting it.

“It is difficult to foretell what extensive changes of family economics and social organisation will be requisite to create new incentives to parenthood adequate to insure us against gradual extinction.” Professor Hogben said the existence of the natural selection co-efficient made it possible to visualise a time two million years hence when all human beings would be produced in multiple births. A woman having twins or triplets would not waste more time in giving birth to a large family than a man did when he played golf on the excuse that he needed exercise other than shaving and conversation. PEACEFUL CONQUERORS. Professor F. A. E. Crewe, of Edinburgh', said the Chinese were swarming and were conquering in their peaceful migration vast regions in the Pacific. "This migration is qn event which

surpasses in importance all the civil wars that are now being prosecuted in China, for we are being given evidence that of all the human stocks the Chinese are perhaps the most adaptable. They seem to breed and develop normally anywhere and everywhere. “If this is the case, then indeed the Chinese will inherit the earth. “It seems to me that we have to accept the fact that just as we and other peoples swarmed years ago, so now the Indians, the Japanese, and the Chinese, for the same reason that they, as we, are animals who under certain circumstances exhibit characteristic reactions, are exhibiting this migratory urge. “But whereas in our time there was ample room, nowadays there are political barriers to migration everywhere. “We are not migrating, not because we are racially senile but because we are socially comfortable. > “Unless we can prevent the causes that lead up to migration we cannot Drevent migration, and in the case of Indians, Japanese, and Chinese the causes have already operated. What can be done? I do not know. “Since we cannot impose compulsory birth-control upon our surging competitors and upon subject races for our own political ends, I suppose we shall be pushed out of those Imperial territories which we cimnot colonise by such races as can. “Perhaps the time will come when the emigrant will be advised, after a complete physiological examination, that he should’seek-a particular habitat rather than go, as he now does, to that part of the Empire which in its advertisements seems to offer him the most rapid financial gain. “If the psychologist can tell ,us what trade or profession wd should follow it is the biologist who will tell us where we should follow it.”

MAN’S ANTIQUITY “Man is what he is because of his brain.” ■ x . Sir Arthur Keith constantly stressed this fact as he traced the evolution of man in his evening discourse. He gave the antiquity of the human stem as twenty million years, and declared that eighteen million years had been necessary for the evolution of the human foot. Sii’ Arthur stressed the importance of recognising that the common ancestor of anthropoid apes and man was a tree-climbing animal.