Stu,—I have read with interest Dr. Norman Maclean's article "
The Unborn Millions " in your issue of July 2nd. I must, however, take exception to some of his statements. He says that " a very brief examination of the facts reveals that the later and not the early children inherit the finest qualities " of their parents, and he gives a list of geniuses who were younger brothers in large families. That a certain proportion of geniuses were younger brothers in large families was only natural at a time when large families were the rule rather than the exception. It would be quite easy to match Dr. Maclean's list with one in which the geniuses were either the only children of their parents or their first-born. Caesar, Horace, Cromwell, Pope and Ruskin were examples of only children. Milton, Samuel Johnson, Gibbon, Burns and Carlyle of first-born.
Dr. Maclean is mistaken in his estimate of the French population of Canada. It is not 5,000,000, but 3,000,000. It is not expected in Canada that the French Canadians will be in a majority quite as soon as he thinks, namely, in a generation. No one who knows Quebec City will believe that Dr. Maclean is speaking seriously when he says that it "has replaced Paris as the capital of the most civilised race on earth." He attributes the large families of the French Canadians to their " cleaving to their God." If by "cleaving to their God " he means their church attendance he may or may not be. right. Certainly the French Canadian is a much more regular churchgoer than the English-speaking Canadian, but if he means their higher morality, I can only say that during the forty-nine years I lived in the Province of Quebec I never heard a French Canadian claim that the morals of his people were higher than those
of his English-speaking compatriots.—Yours, &c., W. B. HOWELL. Southvietv, Ringmore, Sheldon, S. Devon.
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