RECORD OF FAMILY FACULTIES. 



Bible. It would contain more notice of infantile events than can be 

 inserted in the tables that form the bulk of the volume. However, each 

 child when he grows old enough should have one of the latter tables all 

 to himself. 



I would here point out the propriety of assigning to every child some 

 such book as the Life History Album, 1 prepared by the Collective 

 Investigation Committee of the British Medical Association. The album 

 is intended to serve as a register of the current events of a life from 

 childhood onwards, so far as they are connected with development and 

 health. If the register is faithfully kept, the album will serve the child 

 in good stead the older he grows, and will be an advantage to his 

 children after him. It will contain a large amount of detail, an abstract 

 only of which could be inserted in this Record of Family Faculties, 

 which is intended to bring together in a compact form the biological 

 histories of many near relatives, and cannot, in consequence, afford space 

 for more than brief notices of each of them. 



Pages 215. Each of these pages is assigned to one of the 

 fourteen direct ancestors specified in the foregoing diagram, and in the 

 same numerical order, and is intended to be headed by his name. 

 In other respects they are nearly alike and contain a series of questions. 

 The object gained by answering them is threefold : the personal interest 

 to the family in having the replies put upon record, the light they may 

 throw on ancestral peculiarities which may be serviceable to the writers, 

 and the statistical use to which they may be put by scientific inquirers. 

 I will explain them from the latter point of view, as practically including 

 the whole of the three. 



(i) Date of birth and (16) that of death are plain facts admitting of 

 verification and serving to identify, and to give the age at death of each 

 member of the family, by which the family tendency to longevity or 

 .otherwise is measured. 



(2), (3) Birthplace and residence are partial indications of race and 

 origin, which, if confirmed by the surname, the personal characteristics, and 

 other data, would justify the inquirer in sorting the replies into groups. Out 

 of a large number of returns it would not be difficult to pick out several 



1 Life History Album, prepared by direction of the Collective Investigation Committee 

 of the British Medical Association, edited by Francis Gallon, F.R.S., Chairman of the Life 

 History Sub-Committee (Macmillan and Co., 1884). 



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