It is true that instances have been observed in which characters peculiar to males have been developed in females. This phenomenon, however, seldom appears among individuals of the higher orders, and among the lower forms of life where it occurs, it is always manifested under low circumstances of nutrition or in cases of old age, disease, or loss of vitality. Instances are cited in which hens, after they have become old or diseased, have taken on characters peculiar to males. In all “old-settled” countries women are in excess of men, and this is true, notwithstanding the fact that more boys are born than girls. Regarding the excess of the male over female births, Mr. Darwin quotes from Professor Faye, who says: A still greater preponderance of males would be met with, if death struck both sexes in equal proportion in the womb and during birth. But the fact is, that for every one hundred still-born females, we have in several countries from 134.6 to 144.9 still-born males.[35] #/ Statistics show that during the first four or five years of life, more male children die than female. [35] _The Descent of Man_, 1887, p. 243. Although whenever throughout Mr. Darwin’s _Descent of Man_ he has been pleased to deal with the subject of structural variations, he has given us to understand that they are injurious to the constitution, and although he has shown that their appearance is much more frequent in men than in women, yet he does not seem to realize whither his admissions are leading him. He has proved by seemingly well-established facts that the female organism is freer from imperfections than the male, and therefore that it is less liable to derangements; also, that being more highly specialized, it is less susceptible to injury under unfavourable conditions; yet, in attempting to explain the reason why so many more male than female infants succumb to the exigencies of birth, he expresses the opinion that the size of the body and “especially of the head” being greater in males, they would be “more liable to be injured during parturition.”