I'J A//r aii<l lA'ttvi'H of Francis Ga/fnn 



of Galton's friends — Darwin, Grove, Hooker, Brcxlrick, Spencer, S|X)tti8woode', 

 etc.; the dark hack room with its slielves loaded with pamphlet cases filled 

 witli letters and nianuscrij)ts, the hoxes of models, and the notes of a long 

 lifetime of collecting, mostly indexed by Galton himself, all these will be 

 familiar memories to his friends, and formed a singularly uni(jue environment, 

 very characteristic of the man. A great reference lil)rary, one of the principal 

 rooms of the house devoted to a study, reproductions of modern or medieval 

 art, these were not essential needs of Galton's nature. Among his lx)oks were 

 no long series of foreign journals or transactions, and but few fundamental 

 treatises on anthropology or natural history. His library consisted chiefly 

 of books which their writers presented to him — such as Darwin's works — 

 or of offprints and papers sent to Galton when his name had l)ecome known. 

 There are .scarcely two dozen l)ooks in Galton's library as we now have it, 

 which we can <as.sert he must have purchased to forward his work. There 

 are masses of measurements and ob.servations of Galton's own, but unlike 

 Darwin he did not stjirt by analysing published material. He collected 

 afresh either dii'ectly or through others and formed his conclusions de novo. 

 I do not think he ever studied Laplace or Poisson; I am confident that he 

 had never considered the original papers of Gauss: even while CJalton's work 

 seems to flow naturally from that of Quetelet', I am very doubtful how far 

 he owed much to a clo.se reading of the great Belgian statistician. He 

 formed no collection of his books, and the few references to Quetelet in 

 Galton's writings are such as might easily arise from indirect sources. Galton 

 took up his problems one after anotlier and worked at them largely dis- 

 regarding their past history, when indeed they had one. Tiiis is only 

 possible in a man of great insight and brimming over with suggestive ideas 

 and novel proce-sses. But the method has some drawbacks, when adopted 

 by lesser men, and even, as in his above-cited account of his observations on 

 the Corona, we may find it open to criticism in Galton himself But unless 

 my readers grasp this characteristic of Galton's nature they will fail to 

 understand how, with all his travel and the social and executive calls on his 

 time, he was yet able to accomplish so much. It is dangerous advice to give to 

 every scientific worker, but it is the only useful advice to give to a young man 

 of genius: F'ind a little trodden path, and explore it rapidly alone, without 

 regard to the work of others; many precious hours will be wasted if you 

 follow up the spoor of each one who has pa-ssed athwart your path liefore. 

 Galton took some time to find his individual ti^ack, but having found it, he 

 went ahejid without much regard to forerunners or even to tIio.se working 

 on parallel lines. It was this individuality of metho<l which impressed 

 itself on his environment and rendered him so independent of the usual 

 appurtenances of the scholar. He thought and he wttrked with the simplest 

 of tools, and these mostly of his own making. 



' Hung at the present time on the walls of the Committee Room in the Galton Ij«lK)rutory. 

 The family iKirtraits which hung in the »lriiwing-nx)m and flaltoHN bedroom may .still be seen 

 on our whIIh, and even the <|UHint htunted eupboani wardrobe from (ialtoii's di-essing-rooni now 

 serves as a store for iiicehanical calculators — a use which would have delighted his heart! 



* In a card index prepan^d by Gallon himself to his books and pamphlets the name of 

 Quetdet does not appear. 



