February 3, 1898] 



NATURE 



VoZ 



they began late, and they had not yet caught up some other 

 nations, and much had still to be done in this country in 

 order to provide the facilities that were needed to furnish their 

 sons with the knowledge that was necessary to enable them to 

 carry on the commercial business of the country. The City 

 and Guilds Institute had in the most munificent manner spent 

 on its technical colleges in the course of the past eighteen years 

 about half a million out of the funds over which it had control ; 

 but could they go on relying upon private munificence so much 

 as they had done for the purposes of technical education ? He 

 ventured to think that the time had come when there should be 

 some system supported by funds, if necessary, of some public 

 nature by which colleges should be founded in the great centres 

 where they were needed, and branch colleges of a similar 

 description in smaller places where they were wanted. The 

 whole scheme of technical education seemed to him to have 

 come to the point at which it required some further considera- 

 tion. In connection with this subject one had often to speak of 

 Germany and Switzerland, but he was quite sure that they did 

 not speak of them in any spirit of jealousy, but, on the contrary, 

 in a spirit of admiring emulation of their work. They must 

 take what they could that was best from those countries and 

 adopt it, and leave the latter to act in a similar manner towards 

 this country. 



SCIENTIFIC SERIALS. 



American Journal of Science, January. — A new harmonic 

 analyser, by A. A. Michelson and S. W. Stroud. This is an 

 instrument designed to sum up as many as eighty terms of a 

 Fourier series, or to analyse a given curve into its original series. 

 The pen which traces the curve is worked up and down by a 

 lever controlled by a spring. This spring is stretched by an ex- 

 centric, which imparts a "simple harmonic" variation to the 

 force. The stretching is resisted by another spring. Eighty 

 such elements are connected together, with one resisting spring 

 to counterbalance the sum of the elementary springs. The pen 

 therefore moves in accordance with the sum of the elementary 

 periodic motions. The authors obtain by this machine the 

 mathematical series lepresenting the profile of a human face. — 

 Anew form of physical pendulum, by J. S. Stevens. The error 

 introduced into the ordinary physical pendulum by the fact that 

 the knife-edges and clamp affect the moment of inertia may be 

 eliminated by boring a hole into the rod and screwing the knife 

 edges a little way in, so that they offset the mass of brass bored 

 out. — The Protostegan plastron, by G. R. Wieland. This is a 

 restoration of the plastron of two specimens of the turtle de- 

 scribed before as Archelon ischyros. — Phosphorescence produced 

 by electrification, by J. Trowbridge and J. E. Burbank. When 

 a piece of fluorspar is first exposed to the action of X-rays, and 

 subsequently heated, it shows a bright phosphorescence. The 

 same phenomenon may be produced by exposing the mineral to 

 an electric brush discharge, and subsequently heating it. It is 

 probable, therefore, that the X-rays produce an electrification of 

 the fluorspar. — On iron meteorites, as nodular structures in stony 

 meteorites, by H. L. Preston. It is an important fact that of 

 over 100 falls and finds of siderites or iron meteorites but nine 

 have been seen to fall, while of the aerolites or stony meteorites 

 of over 400 falls and finds, more than one-half have been seen 

 to fall. The author gives several reasons in support of the view 

 that the siderites are merely the crystallised metallic nodules 

 contained in the larger and more conspicuous stony meteorites. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 London. 



Royal Society, December 13, 1897. — "An Examination, 

 into the Registered Speeds of American Trotting Horses, with 

 Remarks on their Value as Hereditary Data." By Francis 

 Gallon, D.C.L., F.R.S. 



It is strange that the huge sums spent on the breeding of 

 pedigree stock, whether of horses, cattle, or other animals, 

 should not give rise to systematic publications of authentic 

 records in a form suitable for scientific inquiry into the laws of 

 heredity. An almost solitary exception to the disregard shown 

 by breeders and owners, of exact measurements for publication 

 in stud books, exists in the United States with respect to the 

 measured speed of " trotters" and "pacers" under defined con- 

 ditions. The performance of one mile by a trotter, harnessed 



NO. i475> VOL. 57] 



to a two-wheeled vehicle, carrying a weight of not less than 

 150 lbs. inclusive of the driver, in 2 minutes 30 seconds quali- 

 fies him for entry in the "Trotting Register," giving him, as 

 it were, a pass-degree into a class of horses whose several utmost 

 speeds or " records" are there published. 



The system of timing was first put into practice more than 

 fifty years ago, and has since been developed and improved. In 

 1892 a considerable change was made in the conditions by the 

 introduction of bicycle wheels with pneumatic tyres, which 

 produced a gain of speed, the amount of which is much dis- 

 cussed, but which a prevalent opinion rates at 5 seconds in the 

 mile. Thenceforward the records are comparable on nearly 

 equal terms. All trotting performances up to the 2' 30" standard 

 are registered in the large and closely printed volumes of 

 " Wallace's Year Book," published under the authority of the 

 American Trotting Association. Vols, viii.-xii. refer to the 

 years 1892-6, and it is from the entries in these that the following 

 remarks are based. 



The object of my inquiry was to test the suitability of these 

 trotting (and pacing) records for investigations into the laws of 

 heredity. I had to determine whether the observations fell into- 

 a tolerably smooth curve ; and, if so, whether that curve was a 

 tolerable approach to the normal curve of frequency. In the 

 latter event the observations would fall into line with numerous 

 anthropometric and other measures which have been often dis- 

 cussed, and which, when treated by methods in which the 

 arithmetic mean is employed, yield results that accord with 

 observed facts. 



I had 5705 extracts made from the entries published in the 

 Year Books for the five years 1892-6. It was tedious work, and 

 I thought it unnecessary to repeat it to check the results, being 

 satisfied after some examination that they were quite accurate 

 enough for general conclusions. They were arranged in columns ? 

 the first to the left contained entries of all observations recorded 

 as 2' 29-0", 29I", 29^", or 29I" ; that is of all under 2' 30" down 

 to 2' 29" inclusive. The second column referred to 2' 28" o, 

 28"i, 28"!, and 28"f , and so on with the rest. These were then 

 reduced to percentages and diagrams were drawn from them, of 

 which the following, for the year 1896, is one ; it will serve as- 

 a fair sample of the other four. 



20 



50,Sec'? 



£0 



/o 



If divided by the eye into imaginary columns corresponding to- 

 those in the tables, the point representing the sum of the ob- 

 servations of 2' 29" 'o', 2(^'\, 29"i and 29"! will be found in 

 the middle of the first imaginary column, that is to say it stands 

 vertically above the point that lies half way between 29 and 30 

 on the scale along the base. The dots are connected by thin 

 lines to show the trace or curve of the observations. The smooth, 

 curves are those of normal frequency, calculated from the values 

 of the mean (M) and of the probable error (P.E. ), which are 

 given in the diagrams. 



Leaving aside for the moment the strange pinnacle that rises 

 on the extreme left of every diagram, we see that the traces of 

 the rest of the observations run very roughly, but not intolerably 

 so. In each diagram they seem to be disposed about a funda- 

 mentally smooth curve. Considering the smallness of the 

 interval, namely, only one second, that separates the observations 

 assigned* to each pair of successive columns, together with the 

 experience derived from other kinds of statistical curves, it seenas 

 to me that the run of the observations is good enough to certify 

 their general trustworthiness. As regards the pinnacle it is 

 different matter, and is one which when beginning work,«a& 



