PARENTAGE 3 



hood. Its site is now covered with small houses. 

 The two fine larches that flanked it gave me a love 

 for that tree, which persists and is still recognisably 

 associated with its origin. 



My six nearest progenitors, namely the two 

 parents and four grandparents, were markedly different 

 in temperament and tastes, and they have be- 

 queathed very different combinations of them to their 

 descendants. I can only partly touch on these. 



My grandfather, Samuel John Galton (1 753 

 1832), was a scientific and statistical man of business. 

 He was a Fellow of the provincially famous Lunar 

 Society, whose members met at one another's houses 

 on the day and night of the full moon, and which, 

 though small in numbers, was so select as to include 

 Priestley, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, Keir the chemist, 

 Withering the botanist, Watt, and Boulton. Full 

 particulars of the Lunar Society are to be found in 

 Smiles' Life of Boulton, and elsewhere. 



I may mention that the late Sir Rowland Hill, of 

 penny-postage fame, told me that the event which 

 first gave him a taste for science was the present of a 

 small electrical machine-made to him when a boy, by 

 my grandfather. 



Samuel John Galton was very fond of animals. 

 He kept many bloodhounds; he loved birds, and 

 wrote an unpretentious little book about them in 

 three small volumes, with illustrations. He had 

 a decidedly statistical bent, loving to arrange all 

 kinds of data in parallel lines of corresponding lengths, 

 and frequently using colour for distinction. My 

 father, and others of Samuel John Galton's children, 

 inherited this taste in a greater or less degree ; it rose 



