A COMPARISON.

Western Star, Issue 1353, 11 May 1889, Page 1 (Supplement)

A COMPARISON.

In a recent number of the ' Nineteenth Century,'Mr. G-. J. Romanes, the eminent naturalist and orthodox Eoman Catholic, makes some observant remarks upon the sexes. Mr. Romances ungallantly states that the average brain weight of women is five ounces less than that of men. He forgets tht quality, no doubt, quality in thesadJhingß being everything. ) Yet in rapidity of perception women completely beat men, and in proof of it the grave naturalist tells us that he has known ladies who upon seeing "another lady pass at full speed in a carriage" could analyse her toilet from bonnet to shoes.

Women also possess a wonderful power of cursory reading, imbibed from the perusal of thousands of threevolume novels. Mr. Romanes has tried a number of educated individuals at a round table, to whom he success ively gave the same paragraph of a book, allowing them only ten seconds apiece to grasp the meaning of twenty lineß. Women, with their concentrated high-pressure novel-reading power, always proyed victorious. The observant naturalist declares that " personal vaDity, fondness of display, and delight in the sunshine of admiration," are feminine characteristics. We should hardly have b'lieved him but as Mr. Eomanes says so, we must print his statement. He also declares that the daughters of Eve are " little capable of impartiality or doubt;" and though generous in their acts, they are rarely " generous in their judgments "of eaca other. Mr. Romanes should have added that towards men they are sometimes a trine lenient. The intelligent naturalist admits, however., a vast superiority of women in some matters which seem to us of high importance. They are preeminent in " affection, sympathy, devotion, self-denial, modesty, long-suffering, patience under pain and adversity, reverence " —in short, he goes on at such length about these superiorities that we must cease further quotations for fear of offending cur masculine readers.