QUADRUPLICITY
“ The present outburst of multiple births,” says Dr Josiah Oldfield, in a lecture to the London School of Dietetics, “ is a throw-back towards the primitive.” With submission, as the lawyers say, and in order that any of my women readers who may be called upon to wear the triple crown, may not forthwith hide their heads in shame, I say that that is nonsense (says a writer in the London Morning Post). Triplets are unheard of among the great apes, and twins are much rarer than in humans. Again, all manner of creatures, some of them quite low down in the scale, give birth to only one offspring at a time. Their fecundity is settled entirely by their environment—that is, upon their ability to feed and guard a given number of offspring. Where the task is easy, as in the domestic pig, or where ■ the parents Wash their hands, sb to speak, of family cares, as in the case of the haddock, fecundity increases.
Permanent link to this item
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TAWC19360501.2.82
Bibliographic details
Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 52, Issue 3750, 1 May 1936, Page 10
Word Count
165QUADRUPLICITY Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 52, Issue 3750, 1 May 1936, Page 10
Using This Item
NZME is the copyright owner for the Te Awamutu Courier. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of NZME. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.
Log in