WORLD'S STANDING ROOM.

Shannon News, 21 November 1924, Page 4

WORLD'S STANDING ROOM.

A POOR LOOK-OUT IN A.D. 3000 SCIENTIFIC PROPHECY. .

Sectional meetings ot the British Association at Toronto were addressed by their respective presidents recently. Dr. P. G. Shrubsall, principal assistant medical officer to,the London ounty Council, the presided of the anthropology section (states .Router a Toronto correspondent) said that, going right back to the early ages so far as could he judged from skeletons, early man did not Jive much beyond eai*y .adult life, though some individuals attained to an old age. More people now lived to middle age or bey°Thefe was nothing in; the records .of the examination of men by recruiting boards during the war to suggest that the British people had degenerated had increased nearly a stone in the more than other nations. In London elementary schools there had been a gain of a full half-inch in stature since 1904. In public.schools average gains of an inch or mqr e recorded. The average weight of the crews in the Oxford and Cambridge boat race, which were alwayschosen from the pick of the undergraduates, London there had been 'no increase last 60 years. Healthy Towns. With improvements in food, housing and surroundings, and with modern medical inspection and treatment of children, th e town, as. regards the physique of the population, was now gaining over the country, aad London children were now second, to nOne. In during the last 15 years in the number of defective persons—particularly mental defectives. Dr. Siirubsall concluded: *'A pessimistic view of the physical or mental condition of the people.of BaglanA is unnecessary and unfounded. Stature and weight at least are not; leis thaa in the days of the making of England —of Agincourt or of Waterloo. The general health of thy uutioii is better, and the expectation of - life logger than ever before. Emigration from the eugenic standpoint though a real disadvantage to' England, has been a I source of strength to the Empire of Associated Nations." . .1 Wiliite Australia. Professor J. W. Gregory, of .Glasgow University, in his, presidential address to the Geographical Section, said that a possible settlement of the problem of the future of the surplus populations of the European race lay in the; opening up of Australia -to white settlers which was the idea conceived in the "White Australia'', policy. Statistics showed that ; the .world's population was i increasing at a rate which would cause it "to double itself in .60 years. If this rate continued, the 6,600,000,000, which it had been calculated was the most the world could i feed, would be in existence in 120 years, while even if the food supply were indefinitely multiplied standing roomon the earth would all.be filled when the. population reached 700 billions in the, year 3000. - .As against the restrictions in America, and ; Africa, he declared that in Australia the 'fundamental "problem was the possibility of the occupation of the whole continent by the European race.