CHAPTER VIII 



THE WORK OF FRANCIS GALTON 



30. Sir Francis Galtoris Investigations in Heredity. 



DURING the period from 1865 to 1900, one of the great- 

 est contributors to the theory of heredity was Sir Francis 

 Galton, and his investigations deserve to be reported with 

 clearness and in some detail, partly because the nature of his ex- 

 periments and their results are not always entirely understood, 

 and partly also because of a popular misconception of the nature 

 and applicability of his "law." 



In 1889 appeared Galton's famous book on "Natural Inheri- 

 tance" (2a), which should be specially noted, inasmuch as it con- 

 stituted the first deliberate attempt since Quetelet's publications 

 (1832-1846-1848-1871), dealing with anthropometric measure- 

 ments, to marshal vital statistics into a series in such a form as 

 to show the laws governing heredity in populations, in respect to 

 such matters as stature, eye-color, artistic faculty, and disease, 

 since these involve Galton's well-known "Law of Regression," and 

 consist in the application of mathematical principles to the statis- 

 tical data of inheritance. Inasmuch as this was the most thorough 

 and extensive attempt at the development of a law of heredity 

 upon a mathematical basis appearing prior to the re-discovery of 

 Mendel's papers in 1900, it calls for consideration herein. 



Galton calls attention to the fact that the faculties of men may 

 be roughly sorted into those that are natural and those that are 

 acquired, and proposes dealing with the former class. 



Galton is noteworthy, in his day, for calling attention to the 



particulate nature of inheritance. It is interesting to quote his 



words : 



"All living beings are individuals in one aspect, and composite in 

 another. They are stable fabrics of an inconceivably large number of 

 cells, each of vv^hich has, in some sense, a separate life of its own, and 



