Correlation of Intellect with Size and Shape of Head 333 



know scarcely in any one case, whether differentiation has taken place 

 by direct selection of few or of many organs. When once such 

 measurements are forthcoming we shall have firmer ground to go upon, 

 and the processes of the present memoir seem to suggest how in the 

 future we shall be able to link together quantitatively local races, and 

 possibly at a more remote date obtain quantitative conceptions of the 

 stages of evolutionary descent itself. 



" On the Correlation of Intellectual Ability with the Size and 

 Shape of the Head. (Preliminary Notice.)" Drawn up by 

 KARL PEARSON, F.R.S., University College, London. Received 

 January 8, Head January 23, 1902. 



(A Xcw Year's Greeting to Francis Galton, 1902.) 



(1.) The collection and reduction of the material on which this pre- 

 liminary notice is based were due to co-operative labour. Our aim 

 was to ascertain which, if any, physical characters are sensibly corre- 

 lated with intellectual ability. With this end in view we obtained 

 leave from the Cambridge Anthropometric Committee to freely use 

 their valuable series of measurements on Cambridge undergraduates. 

 Our object was to discover whether these measurements had any rela- 

 tionship to the character of the degrees afterwards obtained by the 

 measured. In order to do this it was necessary to copy the names of 

 the persons measured, and ascertain what WHS the nature of the 

 degrees ultimately obtained by them. The work of copying the names 

 and colleges of the measured was first undertaken by Miss Mildred E. 

 Barwell, of Girton College, and on her leaving Cambridge was con- 

 tinued arid completed by Miss M. Beeton, of the same college. Miss 

 Beeton prepared cards giving the name, college, and chief physical 

 measurements of upwards of a thousand Cambridge undergraduates. 

 This work was very laborious, and considerably increased by the 

 number of duplicates which had to be discarded.* The next stage 

 was to get the subject, place, and character of the degree ultimately 

 taken by the measured placed upon the cards. The labour of tracing 

 each individual in the publications of the University would have been 



* There seems to have been a desire on the part of some of the measured to test 

 the accuracy of the measurer by repeating the process as often as possible, and 

 subjecting him to various artifices. One senior wrangler was measured no less than 

 five times ! Considering that the measurer had not the means of a prison warder 

 for controlling his subject, he appears to have managed fairly well. When the 

 duplicates were hopelessly irreconcilable generally in those characters depending 

 upon the agency of the subject they were all rejected. In other cases where the 

 differences were slight, the first measurements were taken as representative, and 

 the later cards thrown out. 



