IS MANKIND GROWING TALLER?

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 249, 24 March 1888, Page 4

IS MANKIND GROWING TALLER?

Sovn researches bearing upon the question,. Is mankind growing taller? are in progress in the United States. The result of these inquiries (says the London "Standard") sroes far to show that the height of the American lias been and &till is .steadily increasing, so that within a reasonable number of centuries the men of to-day will be looked back upon as a race of pigmies compared with the giants of the future. In America tho improvement in physique is even moro marked than in Europe. This fact, curiously enough, can be proved by the incontrovertible evidence of the tailor. Mr Edward Atkinson, a wellknown statistician, remembering that by far tho greater number of his countrymen buy their clothes ready • made, sont out a circular to the different dealers in New York, Boston, Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, Austin, and Montreal, asking for the average sizes of the gatnjents which they sell. The answers he received show that, while the New Englanders and Canadians average from sft B^in. to sft 9in. in height, the men of the South and Wesfc are fully 1 inch taller. In Western America tho tailors have been obliged year after year to enlarge their measurements,, so that the sizes which were saleable ton years ago are apt to hang upon their hands, simply because the customers are now* taller and stouter and of greater girth about the chest. Again, different section© of the country vary very much as regards the roominess of clothes which they require. An experienced clerk will, for instance, at once pick out the coats, waistcoats, shirts, and trousers suitable for tho Southern and South- Western trade, and reject those unfitted for the Western and Northern markets. InToxas it is found that the waist-measure-has increased from an average of 32 inches to 33 inches during the past five years. Ib thus appears that the American man is decidedly gaining in size and weight. If this has "happened dining " twenty years of the American fryingpan, dyspeptic bread, pale pie, and cooking in general under the supervision of cooks who were sent from the place where tho meat did not come from," what, Mr Atkinson asks, " may be expected when American women learn to cook ?" In no European country are there sufficient statistics, extending over a long period, which would enable one to obtain similar facts regarding the Old- World branches of the meet There is, however, every ground' for believing that so far from man, even in i this hemisphere, degenerating in physique, he is actually improving. >

Hero lies Snooks, M,A., vVho never did any harnvmen say ; Ib being equally well understood Thai poor old, Snooka never did anygoodJ