00 Lift' and Letters of Franeh Galton 



Issued by the Kew Committee of the Royal Society, was publislied. Galton 

 includes it both in his list of niemoii-s and in the bound volumes of his 

 paj)ei-s, so that it was doubtless compiled by him. It ^ives information as 

 to the history of the Olwervatory, the wide range of instruments tested by 

 the stai!', the nature of many of the tests and tlie charges for testing. The 

 Conmiittee* of which CJalton was then Chairman was indeed a strong one, 

 and the general progress made in thirty years very noteworthy. 



But Galton was not only intei-ested in the methods of testing, but also in the 

 convenience of the building itself and of its enviroinnent. General Strachey 

 coming out one day from the Observatory noticed that the Mid-Surrey Golf 

 Club had established a green immediately in front of the Observatory, and 

 thinking how the matter miglit develop held that some means must be 

 taken to secure a protected area round the building. But the institution 

 possessed no funds for such an expenditure ; accordingly Francis Galton 

 (1893) generously and quietly provided the money, between £300 and £400, 

 for placmg a fence enclosing about six acres of ground round the Observatory. 

 Dr Chree, the Superintendent, writing to me in 1912, said : 



"Sir Francis' interests according to ray recollections were more with instruments and their 

 verification than with olxservational work. He usually professed to regard hin)sel{ as a poor 

 man of business and finance, but 1 think this was partly a pretence intended to form an excuse 

 for leaving financial matters largely to General Strachey, — a very great friend of Sir Francis' — 



who like<l to deal with matters of that kind The Kew Committe*' used to meet once a month 



with a long vacation in summer — and generally Sir Francis got n>e to go up to Rutland Gate 

 before each meeting and go through the business with him. His long experience of the Obser- 

 vatory rendered him so familiar with the work that he used to get along wonderfully well as 

 Chairman, notwithstanding his deafness." 



An amusing anecdote may be told to illustrate Gralton's kindliness of 

 spirit. With tlie increase of the testing work the Royal Society officers 

 decided that the then existing system of Kew Observatory accoimts — which 

 was of General Strachey's arranging, somewhat j)rimitive, and not requiring 

 any special financial training in the Observatory officials — must be altered, 

 and the Royal Society's auditor proposed a scheme of the complexity natmally 

 dear to the professional mind. General Strachey wiis much hurt and Galton 

 said privately that something must be devised to soothe General Strachey. 

 This proved easier than might have been anticipated, for the non-financially 

 trained, on close scrutiny of the accounts, discerned that the Royal Society 

 had been recovering income tax and inadvertently not paying it over to the 

 Kew Committee I That Committee was accordingly able to extract a sub- 

 stantial sum from the Royal Society and General Strachey was thus led 

 to feel he was a match for the financial experts of the Society I 



One or two miscellaneous papers may be fitly touched on in this chapter 

 because they illustrate either Galton's instrumental ingenuity, or have more 

 or less relation to the subjects here discussed. About 1877 Galton sent a 

 letter to the Field newsj:)aper suggesting a ver)' simple speedometer for 

 bicycles. This was a small sand-glass and all the rider had to do was to 



' Abney, Orylls Adams, ("reak, Carey Foster, Admiral liichards, the Earl of Rosse, Riicker, 

 R. H. Scott, Generals Strachev and Walker, and W. T. L. Wharton. 



