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NATURE 



[August 19, 1920 



To understand aright what has been accomplished 

 in the memoir now under review one has to go back 

 twenty-five years to 1895, when Prof. Pearson, 

 then the occupant of the chair of applied mathe- 

 matics at University College, London, showed how 

 the mathematical theory of statistics could and 

 should be applied to all the manifestations of life. 

 He was the only man then in England to perceive 

 that Francis Galton was a really great'man, and 

 that if the knowledge relating to man and to living 

 things was to be placed on a sound foundation, 

 it must be laid by an application and an ampli- 

 fication of the Galtonian methods. Anatomists 

 had made a survey of the human body and re- 

 corded their experience by giving accurate descrip- 

 tions of what they had seen and broad general- 

 isations as to what they thought. Prof. Pearson 

 realised, as Galton had done before him, that no 

 progress could be made in our knowledge of popu- 

 lations, races, or species until accurate standard 

 methods of measurements had been applied to 

 great numbers of individuals, and hence the first 

 task which faced him, in building up a biometrical 

 school, was the gathering of data to which 

 statistical methods could be applied. Fortunately 

 Sir George Thane, when professor of anatomy at 

 University College, had had the foresight to store 

 in his department great assemblages of human 

 bones recovered from burial grounds in the East 

 End of London — presumably remains of seven- 

 teenth-century Londoners who • had died of the 

 plague. This material became a treasure trove 

 for the growing biometrical school. 



Prof. Pearson's methods were applied to the 

 skulls by the late Dr. W. R. Macdonald, and for 

 the first time we had given to us standard data 

 relating to the skull of the Englishman. Skulls 

 have always been a favourite means for the study 

 of racial characters, but Prof. Pearson wished to 

 show that other bones had also their racial values, 

 and by 1907 he was in a position, with the assist- 

 ance of Miss Juha Bell, to commence his investi- 

 gation of the thigh-bone. 



Prof. Pearson had in the East London collection 

 about 800 examples of this bone — each of which 

 was examined, and in almost every instance 

 measurements were made and estimates formed 

 relating to eighty characters — in some examples to 

 as many as a hundred — in order to establish the 

 prevailing features of the thigh-bone of English 

 men and women. He had to standardise old 

 methods of making measurements and indices and 

 to invent many new ones. In the course of his 

 work he has brought to light many important 

 facts which are new to anatomists. From this 

 first phase of his investigation he was led, very 

 naturally, to a second — to see how the English 

 NO. 2651, VOL. 105] 



thigh-bone compared with that of Continental 

 peoples. He had to search foreign records, and 

 found them almost as barren of accurate details 

 as those at home, but we cannot help noting his 

 leniency towards the shortcomings of anatomists 

 who live beyond the shores of England. Then 

 followed in due course a third step— a comparison 

 of the thigh-bone of the European with that of 

 other races of the world — and a fourth- — a com- 

 parison of the thigh-bone of modern man 

 with that of ancient and extinct races of mankind. 

 A fifth extension of his original aim was a com- 

 parison of the human femur with that of other 

 members of the Primate class — the" gorilla, the 

 phimpanzee, the orang (the great anthropoids), 

 the gibbon (or small anthropoid), the monkeys of 

 the Old and of the New Worlds, and lastly with 

 the lowest of Primate forms — the Lemuroids, 

 including Tarsius. Then came a sixth exten- 

 sion — a study and comparison of the thigh-bones 

 of extinct apes and Lemuroids. Finally, on the 

 evidence he had thus accumulated from an inten- 

 sive study of the thigh-bone, we have the 

 construction of a pedigree or lineage of their 

 owners — a pedigree which gives us the conception 

 he has formed of man's evolutionary history and 

 of man's relationship to the higher members of 

 the animal kingdom. 



By this natural sequence of inquiries the pro- 

 fessor of mathematics has become an exponent of 

 human phylogenetics. Setting out in 1907 with 

 the intention of examining the femur of the 

 Londoner, he ended in 1919 with a survey of the 

 world of Primates. 



Those who have had experience in arranging 

 the members of a group of plants or animals — 

 in conformity with their natural affinities — in a 

 scheme which will express their evolutionary rela- 

 tionships are well aware that diverse, even con- 

 tradictory, results are obtained, according to the 

 system of parts used in framing the scheme of 

 classification. If we arrange the Primates by 

 grouping them according to the anatomical char- 

 acters of their teeth, we get one result; if by 

 their brains and nervous system, a second and 

 very different grouping; if by their digestive 

 system, a third; if by their reproductive system, a 

 fourth, and so on. All the systems have to be 

 taken into account, and to some, such as the 

 brain, much more weight must be given than to 

 others. In the most perfect scheme of classifica- 

 tion there are always blemishes ; the evidence of 

 one system will be found to contradict or be at 

 variance with that of another. 



There need be no surprise at this variance of 

 evidence; it should be so if heredity works in 

 a Mendelian way. If we confine our attention, in 



