532 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



the Biometric and the Mendelian, were born in the same year. 

 Galton and Mendel were both born in 1822. Galton (Mepiories 0/ 

 My Life, p. 308), with characteristic courtesy, refers to Mendel's 

 work immediately before he refers to his own law. His 

 estimate of the significance of the work done and inspired by 

 Mendel seems to us to be so true and concise that we make 

 no apology for quoting it together with the rest of the para- 

 graph in which it occurs. "I must stop for a' moment to pay 

 a tribute to the memory of Mendel, with whom I sentimentally 

 feel myself connected, owing to our having been born the 

 same year 1822. His careful and long-continued experiments 

 show how much can be performed by those who, like him and 

 Charles Darwin, never or hardly ever leave their homes, and 

 again how much might be done in a fixed laboratory after 

 a uniform tradition of work has been established. Mendel 

 clearly showed that there were such things as alternative 

 atomic characters of equal potency in descent. How far 

 characters generally may be due to simple, or to molecular 

 characters more or less correlated together, has yet to be 

 discovered." The grace and simplicity of this, the delicate 

 manner in which Mendel is associated with Charles Darwin and 

 the soundness of the critical estimation are very characteristic of 

 Galton. It is often said that the course of Charles Darwin's 

 work and thought would have been very different if Mendel's 

 work had come under his notice. It is curious to speculate as to 

 what might have been the course of hereditary inquiry if Galton 

 himself had made the experiments actually carried out by 

 Mendel. 



Galton's claim to fame, however, does not rest only on his 

 pioneer work in the investigation of heredity. He will be 

 perhaps longer known, and he is at present more widely known, 

 as the champion of the application of such knowledge of heredity 

 as we possess to the improvement of the human race ; in other 

 words, as the founder of Eugenics. 



His interest in this question first found expression in two articles 

 on "Hereditary Talent and Character" published in Macmillan's 

 Magazine in 1865, which, curiously enough, is the year in which 

 Mendel published the results of his own classical researches. 

 The width of Galton's interests at this time may be gathered 

 from the fact that the publication which preceded this was one on 

 " Spectacles for Divers, and the Vision of Amphibious Animals," 



