'6M PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION I. 



statistics. One need only refer to the important work being carried 

 on by the Galton School. 



Subjecting data to rigid statistical analysis, such as is being 

 undertaken in the Eugenics Laboratory, is producing some surprising 

 and illuminating results. For instance, the figures of the Glasgow 

 enquiry, have been dealt with. These had showed that boys who lived 

 in one-roomed houses were 11.4 lb. lighter and 4.7 inches shorter than 

 boys in four-roomed houses. Similarly girls were 14 lb. lighter 

 and 5.3 inches shorter. When these figures were corrected, the 

 differences showed a much smaller range, namely, 5.5 lb. lighter, 

 2.4 inches shorter for boys, and 5.4 lb., 2.2 inches for girls. 



The realisation of these facts should save us in Australia from 

 hasty generalisations and fallacious deductions from imperfect data or 

 methods such as are not unknown on the strength of our very small 

 Australian contributions to antliropometry. For instance, in the 

 Sydney survey of children, 1901, of 2,000 children between 5 and 15 

 years of age certain differences from the average standards of 

 Europe and America were found, especially in smaller chest measure- 

 ments. At the time neither observer who made the measurements 

 nor statistician who collated them, claimed that this difference 

 would be found in all Australian or even all Sydney children. They 

 did say, however, that such an indication should be confirmed or 

 disproved by further investigation. But the statement has been 

 made repeatedly, and is commonly accepted as a fact, that the 

 Sydney boy has a chest measurement 3^ inches less than the British 

 boy. Again, in an investigation made recently in another State on 

 1,000 children, rather better measurements than those of New 

 South Wales were found. It was at once inferred that New South 

 Wales must have an inefficient system of physical culture. New 

 South Wales, however, had in a sense invited the unfavourable 

 criticism by concluding that because the figures in her latest enquiry 

 (1909) into the chest measurements of 2,000 boys showed better 

 results than those of seven years previously, that the difference was 

 due to improved breathing exercises. In both cases the numbers 

 were too few to base conclusions on, and there is no proof that the 

 methods adopted were uniform. Such an important question cannot 

 be left unsettled. One might take to heart the example of Germany 

 when she felt herself slandered, as Haddon tells in his History of 

 Anthropology that during the siege of Paris some shells shattered 

 part of the Natural History Museum, and Ouatrefarges in his 

 bitterness of feeling said the Germans were not Teutons at all, but 

 Huns and Mongol invaders, and therefore barbarian and without 

 love or appreciation of science. Germany ordered an official 

 census into the colour of hair and eyes of 6,000,000 school cliildren, 

 wliich Virchow himself supervised, and completely repudiated the 

 calumny. 



The extent of any antliropometric survey must be determined 

 largely by the means available for carrying it out, but to be of any 

 use at all, it should include observations of height, weight and 



