360 Report of the Committee /or conducting Inquiries [Feb. 28, 



February 28, 1895. 



Sir JOHN EVANS, K.C.B., D.C.L., LL.D., Vice-President and 

 Treasurer, in the Chair. 



Professor Alexander Agassiz, who was elected a Foreign Member 

 in 1891, was admitted into the Society. 



A List of the Presents received was laid on the table, and thanks 

 ordered for them. 



This Meeting having been appointed by Council as a Meeting for 

 Discussion, the following papers were taken as the subject of the 

 discussion : 



I. Report of tbe Committee, consisting of Mr. Galton (Chair- 

 man), Mr. F. Darwin, Professor Macalister, Professor 

 Meldola, Professor Poulton, and Professor Weldon, 

 "for Conducting Statistical Inquiries into the Measur- 

 able Characteristics of Plants and Animals." Part I. 

 "An Attempt to Measure the Death-rate due to the 

 Selective Destruction of Carcinus Mcenas with respect to 

 a Particular Dimension." Drawn up for the Committee 

 by Professor WELDON, F.R.S. Received November 20, 

 1894. 



Among the material available for the purposes of the Committee 

 was a sample of Carcinus mcenas, from Plymouth Sound, including a 

 fairly large number of young females. The distribution of abnor- 

 malities in certain dimensions had already been determined for adult 

 females from the same locality (' Roy. Soc. Proc.,' vol. 54, pp. 

 318 329) ; and it seemed worth while to compare the frequency of 

 abnormalities in young individuals at various stages of growth with 

 the frequency of the same abnormalities in adult life, so as to deter- 

 mine whether any evidence of selective destruction during growth 

 could be discovered or not. 



About 7000 females, varying in length from 7'00 to 13'95 mm., 

 were chosen (at random, except as regards their size), and two 

 dimensions were measured in each. The results were then compared 

 with those of the corresponding measurements, made upon a sample 

 of 1000 adult females from the same locality, which are recorded in 

 the paper just referred to. 



