STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM. 6 



head, he will at least be provided for." He did not understand the signifi- 

 cance of the introspective, brooding silence, that tenacious regard for his 

 honor, that willingness to undertake hazardous enterprises without claim- 

 ing any material reward, which Horatio Nelson had already shown and 

 continued to show to the day of his death. We must test the hypothesis 

 that the special gifts required for a naval fighter are foreshadowed hi the 

 child; for, if this prove to be correct, the principle should be utilized hi 

 making selection of untried officers. 



The "special gift" is, as its name implies, something that has come, 

 willynilly, through the germ plasm. Such hereditary traits are usually 

 family traits and recur again and again in the family. We have, therefore, 

 to note the indications of a special gift in the boy by an examination of the 

 family, to see where that gift has been developed elsewhere. In the case of a 

 few traits we know rather exactly the relationship that two or more persons 

 in successive generations showing a "gift" may be expected to bear to each 

 other. Such knowledge will be a useful check on the indications of juvenile 



promise. 



2. SPECIAL PROCEDURE. 



To get at the requisite facts for the present investigation into the 

 juvenile promise shown by great naval commanders, and hereditary factors 

 present in their families, the reading of a considerable number of biog- 

 raphies of naval men was undertaken. In some instances, as notably 

 in the case of Nelson, several distinct "lives" were read; in most cases only 

 one. In the case of British officers the Encyclopaedia Britannica was 

 found of assistance; in the case of American officers, the National Cyclo- 

 pedia of American Biography was used (with caution) ; also the American 

 "Who's Who." For family histories research was made in the genealogical 

 libraries of Greater New York, and for British families Burke's "Peerage 

 and Landed Gentry" and other like official genealogies were found very 

 useful. In all this work I had the assistance of my wife, Gertrude C. 

 Davenport, and especially of my assistant, Miss Mary T. Scudder, who 

 did most of the tracing of genealogies and arranged the pedigree charts. 

 This work would hardly have been possible except for an arrangement 

 with the Brooklyn Public Library, which generously mailed to us all the 

 books that we desired from its extensive collections. The compilation of 

 the facts has taken six or eight months of steady work. 



In regard to the method of selection of officers. First of all, this 

 was determined by the availability of full biographies. There are some 

 naval officers quite as eminent as those included in our list about whom 

 we could get few pertinent data. Many biographies gave little infor- 

 mation about juvenile promise or family history and these could not 

 be used. No selection, it need hardly be said, was made with the aim 

 of supporting any preformed conclusions. Practically all the information 

 that we gathered that would throw light on our problem has been set 

 forth, nearly or exactly, in the words of the biographer. We have been 

 always alive to the error introduced by substituting for the descriptive 

 terms of the author terms of our own which could hardly avoid being 



