696 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION I. 



normal child permits the education authority' through ignorance oi 

 partial knowledge to perpetuate educational schemes and mental and 

 physical tests that will give results that are poor or worthless or even 

 harmful. Hygiene has to-day shouldered the responsibility of guiding 

 educational thought on questions of physical development of the 

 child ; it must continue to see that the views taken are wide and deep 

 enough. As an example of how little is really known of a matter 

 of deep educational and national concern, take the annual rate 

 of growth for school-cliildren, and the variations found to exist at 

 certain ages. No special study has been made and there are no 

 facts established yet for Austraha. It is, however, of primary import- 

 ance from the physiological and psychological point of view that 

 education should be modified to meet this condition of physiology 

 working at high pressure. To give examples of other lines along" 

 which investigations have already been made in addition to those 

 previously mentioned, namely. Heron's " Influence of Defective 

 Physique and Unfavourable Home Environment on the Intelli- 

 gence of School-cliildren," and the Effect of Housing on the 

 Physique of Children, we may quote the enquiry into the physique 

 of children born in a year of heavy infant mortahty ; the influence 

 of parental alcoholism on the physique and intelligence of the off- 

 spring ; the influence of parental occupation and the home con- 

 ditions on the physique of the offspring. Such enquiries, even 

 when they give negative results, are valuable, as Heron says, by 

 marking of lines of no thoroughfare. 



From what has been said it will be realised how far-reaching 

 are the possibilities of systematic measurement of children in 

 determining the laws of human evolution — a knowledge of which, 

 as it is stated in the British Anthropometric Committee's report, 

 is of the liighest importance to rulers, statesmen, and all authorities 

 interested in social reform. 



In Australia we have special opportunities and responsibihties 

 to ourselves and to science in regard to a national survey. We 

 are an old race in a new land, removed from the near neighbour- 

 hood of Teuton and Norman cousins to that of oriental races. We 

 are a land given to hasty experimental social legislation. We have 

 acquired responsibihty for a Northern Territory full of new and 

 untried problems, upon the solution of which depends our power 

 to keep our continent our own. We must use every method science 

 puts into our hands, and guide the national destiny by counsels- 

 based on our investigations. 



We should begin by at once undertaking a survey of Australian 

 children with due regard to social, environmental factors and 

 heredity. Such an enquiry can have only a partial value unless it 

 conforms to the standard of the British Anthropometric Committee. 



" Much care and expense," says Dr. Kerr, of the London 

 County Council, " is involved in the recording and analysis of 

 vitality statistics concerning those whose lives have ceased. The 

 vitality statistics of those who are about to enter on active service 

 and the affairs of life, and whose energy is the chief of the national 

 assets, is surely worth the cost of collection.'* 



