(_c_) It is interesting to consider the sexual variations of criminality. Women are everywhere less criminal than men. The proportion varies, however, greatly in different countries. In France it is usually about 4 to 1; in the United States it is about 12 to 1; in Italy and Spain the proportion of women is very small. In Great Britain, on the other hand, the proportion of criminal women is, except during the last year or two (owing probably to changes in police regulations), extremely large, especially for the greater crimes. There has indeed been on the whole a steady increase in the proportion of women criminals in England; in 1834 they were less than 1 in 5; of recent years they have been more than 1 in 4. The greater tendency to recidivism in women has everywhere been noted, and is extremely well marked in England, where it is rapidly increasing, and is associated, it seems, with growing habits of alcoholism. Of incorrigible recidivists a very large proportion in Great Britain are women; and 40 per cent. of the women committed to prison during 1888 had been previously committed more than ten times.[82] Even among the juvenile offenders discharged from reformatory and industrial schools as incorrigible, it appears that the proportion of girls is double that of boys. While men criminals are everywhere in a more or less marked majority, there are certain crimes which both sexes commit about equally, and these are usually the most serious. Thus, as Quetelet remarked, nearly as many women are poisoners as men, and of parricides 50 per cent. are women. The crimes of women are essentially domestic, against fathers and husbands and children. A very large proportion are, directly or indirectly, of a sexual character. It is curious in this connection to note that Marro finds marked physical resemblances between women criminals generally and the class of male criminals guilty of sexual offences; such are less length of arms and hands, less cranial capacity and greater extension of the transverse curve of the head. It is worth while to enumerate briefly the probable causes of the sexual variation in criminality. There are perhaps five special causes acting on women: (1) physical weakness, (2) sexual selection, (3) domestic seclusion, (4) prostitution, (5) maternity. There are firstly the physical and psychical traditions of the race embodied in the organisation of men and women. The extreme but rather spasmodic energy of men favours outbursts of violence, while the activities of women are at a lower but more even level, and their avocations have tended to develop the conservative rather than the destructive instincts. Apart from this, even if women were trained in violence, the superior strength of men would still make crimes of violence in women very hazardous and dangerous. Under existing circumstances, when a woman wants a crime committed, she can usually find a man to do it for her.