138 



CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON. 



of their records. Replies were received from 184. Of these, 73 were at once 

 rejected because of insufficient records, 70 appeared to give promise of material 

 of some value, and 41 were uncertain. Several surprises appeared in these 

 answers. First, that coeducation and the preservation of complete records 

 often covered a longer period than was expected ; second, that in a number of 

 cases the schools were in a sense family institutions, having from 25 to 60 per 

 cent of their present students the children of former students. One institu- 

 tion has a Second Generation Club; others have grandchildren of former 

 students in attendance, and one claims "four or five generations." A number 

 of coeducational colleges date back 50 to 70 years, and several have records 

 complete from the beginning. High-grade secondary schools have even a 

 longer coeducational record, one claiming over a hundred years, and several 

 have preserved their records complete for more than 70 years. 



"Eager to test the quality of this material, as soon as I was relieved of office 

 duties I spent a month abstracting the records of one college. Though a small 

 institution, having an annual registration of about 500, and the records dating 

 only from 1872, 1 obtained the scholarship grades of both parents and from 1 to 

 5 children in 26 famiUes. There has not been time to systematize this material 

 and properly to compute the averages. A rough approximation was, however, 

 made as a means of estimating the value of the data and table 9 compiled. 



"The results shown by table 9 are too crudely computed to be worth serious 

 discussion as bearing on facts of heredity, but they are of value as indicating 

 that the original data in all probability possess significance and are of value 

 for research purposes. A definite relation of some sort between type of children 

 and type of parental mating seems evident. 



"It is needless to call attention to the fact that the data from one such 

 institution are manifestly inadequate to yield the most reliable results in 

 statistical work. They encourage and emphasize, however, the need of 

 securing additional material from other institutions. In spite of the criticism 

 that may be passed as to the inaccuracy of scholarship records as a measure of 

 intellectual ability, it seems quite evident that we have in these schools the 

 most valuable data now in existence for the quantitative study of intellectual 

 heredit}', and there is no prospect for many years to come of any better 

 material. It is to be hoped that opportunity and facihties for obtaining such 

 records will be afforded." 



Table 9. — Distribution of intelledual ability in children of particular 



7nalings. 



L = grades less than 75 per cent. 



M = grades between 75 and 85 per cent inclusive. 



H = grades more than 85 per cent. 



