29 DECEMBER 1917, Page 18

Alison's often-quoted statement that the average height of Frenchmen diminished

by an inch or more as a result of the Napoleonic Wars is shown by Mr. II. H. O'Farrell in War and the Stature of Population, a paper reprinted from the Eugenics Review for October, to have been founded on a misreading of his French authority, an essay on the population of France by D'Angoville. What D'Angoville really said was that the average height of the conscripts of 1810 was loss than that of the conscripts of 1804, because many of them were two years younger. Elsewhere D'Angeville pointed out that the average height of recruits was 1*650 metres in 1825-23 and 14353 metres in 1830.33, and this variation may be dismissed as negligible. The generalizations based on Alison's statement are thus unfounded.