528 IMPROVEMENT OF THE HUMAN BREED. 



with accomplished actuarial skill, capitalized the value at the child's 

 birth of two classes of events, the one the cost of maintenance while a 

 child and when helpless through old age, the other its earnings as bo}' 

 and man. On balancing the two sides of the account the value of the 

 baby was found to be £6. On a similar principle, the worth of an 

 X-class baby would be reckoned in thousands of pounds. Some such 

 "talented" folk fail, but most succeed, and many succeed greatl}'. The}' 

 found great industries, establish vast undertakings, increase the wealth 

 of multitudes, and amass large fortunes for themselves. Others, 

 whether they be rich or poor, are the guides and light of the nation, 

 raising its tone, enlightening its difficulties, and imposing its ideals. 

 The great gain that England received through the immigration of the 

 Huguenots would be insignificant to what she would derive from an 

 annual addition of a few hundred children of the classes W and X. 

 I have tried, but not yet succeeded to my satisfaction, to make an 

 approximate estimate of the worth of a child at birth according to the 

 class he is destined to occupy when adult. It is an eminently important 

 subject for future investigators, for the amount of care and cost that 

 might profitably be expended in improving the race clearly depends 

 on its result. 



DESCENT OF QUALITIES IN A POPULATION. 



Let us now endeavor to obtain a correct understanding of the way 

 in which the varying qualities of each generation are derived from 

 those of its predecessor. How man}^, for example, of the V class in 

 the offspring come respectively from the V, U, T, S, and other classes 

 of parentage? The means of calculating this question for a normal 

 population are given fully in my Natural Inheritance. There are three 

 main senses in which the word parentage might be used. They differ 

 widely, so the calculations must be modified accordingl3^ (1) The 

 amount of the qualitj^ or facult}^ in question may be known in each 

 parent. (2) It may be known in only one parent. (3) The two parents 

 may belong to the same class, a V -class father in the scale of male 

 classification always mariying a V-class mother, occupying identically 

 the same position in the scale of female classification. 



I select this last case to work out as being the one with which we 

 shall here be chiefly concerned. It has the further merit of escaping 

 some tedious preliminary detailsabout converting female faculties into 

 their corresponding male equivalents, before men and women can be 

 treated statistically on equal terms. I shall assume in what follows 

 that we are dealing with an ideal population, in which all marriages 

 are equally fertile, and which is statistically the same in successive 

 generations, both in numbers and in qualities, so many per cent being 

 always this, so man}^ always that, and so on. Further, I shall take no 

 notice of offspring who die before they reach the age of marriage, nor 



