It may suffice to take a single point. Large families involve the birth of children at very short intervals. It has been clearly shown by Dr. R.J. Ewart ("The Influence of Parental Age on Offspring," Eugenics Review, October, 1911) that children born at an interval of less than two years after the birth of the previous child, remain, even when they have reached their sixth year, three inches shorter and three pounds lighter than first-born children.

For instance, Goldscheid, in Höherentwicklung und Menschenökonomie; it is also, on the whole, the conclusion of Newsholme, though expressed in an exceedingly temperate manner, in his Declining Birth-rate.

If, however, our birth-rate fanatics should hear of the results obtained at the experimental farm at Roseville, California, by Professor Silas Wentworth, who has found that by placing ewes in a field under the power wires of an electric wire company, the average production of lambs is more than doubled, we may anticipate trouble in many hitherto small families. Their predecessors insisted, in the cause of religion and morals, on burning witches; we must not be surprised if our modern fanatics, in the same holy cause, clamour for a law compelling all childless women to live under electric wires.

J. Holt Schooling, "The English Marriage Rate," Fortnightly Review, June, 1901.