[18] It is unnecessary to touch here on the question of infant mortality, which has already been referred to, and will again come in for consideration in a later chapter. It need only be said that a high birth-rate is inextricably combined with a high death-rate. The European countries with the highest birth-rates are, in descending order: Russia, Bulgaria, Roumania, Servia, and Hungary. The European countries with the highest death-rates are, in descending order, almost the same: Russia, Hungary, Spain, Bulgaria, and Servia, It is the same outside Europe. Thus Chile, with a birth-rate which comes next after Roumania, has a death-rate that is only second to Russia. [19] Nystroem (_La Vie Sexuelle_, 1910, p. 248) believes that "the time is coming when it will be considered the duty of municipal authorities, if they have found by experience or have reason to suspect that children will be thrown upon the parish, to instruct parents in methods of preventive conception." [20] The directly unfavourable influences on the child of too short an interval between its birth and that of the previous child has been shown, for instance, by Dr. R.J. Ewart ("The Influence of Parental Age on Offspring," _Eugenics Review_, October, 1911). He has found at Middlesbrough that children born at an interval of less than two years after the birth of the previous child still show at the age of six a notable deficiency in height, weight, and intelligence, when compared with children born after a longer interval, or with first-born children. [21] _Tatler_, Vol. II, No. 175, 1709. [22] "Write Man for Primula, and the stage of the world for that of the greenhouse," says Professor Bateson (_Biological Fact and the Structure of Society_, 1912, p. 9), "and I believe that with a few generations of experimental breeding we should acquire the power similarly to determine how the varieties of men should be represented in the generations that succeed." But Bateson proceeds to point out that our knowledge is still very inadequate, and he is opposed to eugenics by Act of Parliament. [23] E. Solmi, _La Citta del Sole di Campanella_, 1904, p. xxxiv. [24] Only a year before his death Galton wrote (Preface to _Essays in Eugenics_): "The power by which Eugenic reform must chiefly be effected is that of Popular Opinion, which is amply strong enough for that purpose whenever it shall be roused." [25] It may perhaps be necessary to remark that by sterilization is here meant, not castration, but, in the male vasectomy (and a corresponding operation in the female), a simple and harmless operation which involves no real mutilation and no loss of power beyond that of procreation. See on this and related points, Havelock Ellis, _Studies in the Psychology of Sex_, Vol. VI, "Sex in Relation to Society," chap. XII.