IVdnttition Sfwlics 6 



straiiit of my old superetitioii oh if it had l)eeii u nightmare, and was the Hret 

 to give me freedom of thought." (See CialtoiiH letter to Darwin, Plate II of 

 Vol. I.) 



In the rapid gi-owth of our knowledge of the wonderful procens of liuniun 

 development, extending now over nearly a quarter of a million years, and 

 with our present certainty tliat man ha.s used fire for a great portion of that 

 period, the .suggestion that the di.scovery of how to make fire wu.s a product 

 of those last few tliou.sand years which bihlical folk-lore endeavours to cover, 

 may well raise a smile. But does the modern reader realise when he smiles 

 at and criticises tiie mid- Victorians that it was they — Darwin, Galtou, 

 Huxley, Clifford and others — wlio worked their way from such ignorance to 

 insiglit and gave him the power to smile at it'? 



To turn to a lighter matter before we leave the Ai-t of Travel for good, 

 we may find, even in such a work cram full of detail and techni(jue, sure traces 

 of CJaiton's sense of humour. Thus, having remarked thatasse-s to kick mu.st 

 put their head to the ground and to bray must rai.se their tiiil, and described 

 how the head cjin be kept up and the tail kept down, he remarks: 



"In tiostile ni-ightiMurhoods, where silence and concealment ure sought, it might be well to 

 adopt thi.s rather absurd treatment [lashing the tail to a heavy stone]. An a.s« who was being 

 schoole*! accoixling to the meth(xl of thi.s and the preceding paragraph, both at the same time, 

 would be worthy of an artist's sketch." (4th Edn. p. 61.) 



Again, talking of Z)Mr/;-»S)Aoo<m^, Galton remarks: 



"Tt is convenient to sink a large barrel into the flat marsh or mud, as a (lr_v [ilacc to stand 

 or sit in, when waiting for the birds to come. A lady suggests to me, that if tlie sportsman took 

 a bottle of hot water to put under his feet, it would Ix; a great comfort to hin), and in this I 

 quite agn-e; T would take a keg of hot water, when about it.'' {Ibid. p. '2!)S.) 



Talking about Natives' Wives as members of a party, Galton commends 

 them !is giving great life to a party and as being invaluable in picking up 

 gossip, which win give clues of importance, otherwise oflen mi.ssed. He con- 

 siders in a special paragraph the Strenyth of \Vo)tu'H, which he fintls adeijuate 

 for the march, and adds : 



"It is the nature of women to be fond of carrying weights; you may set- them in onini- 

 bu8.ses (!) and carriages, always preferring to hold their baskets or their babii-s on their knees, 

 to setting them down on the seats by their sides. A woman, whose modern dress includes, I 

 know not how many cubic feet of space, has harflly ever pockets of a sufficient size to carry 

 small articles, for she prefers to load her hands with a bag or other weighty object." (Ibid. 

 p. 8.) 



Lastly while Galton admitted that men without independent means 

 could turn travel to excellent account as in opening up new countries, finding 

 natural history specimens or hunting for ivory, there is no doubt that he 



' Nay, does he realise how widespread is still the ignorance of human history in the 

 apiMirently 'educated' classes? During the few months that the cases containing objects bearing 

 on man's development have been on view in the little museum of the Galton Laboratory we have 

 received more than one remonstrance against the dating of a neolithic skeleton at 8000 years 

 and of palaeolithic man at over .50,000 years, as incompatible with the 'well-known date' of 

 the creation of the world ! 



