Transit ion Stiulien flO 



st iifliculi)iis ever |)ut forth by man and was cobblftl uji in tlieraap-ruom oi 

 the Koviil (Jeogruphical Society. It would have it« merit in the eyes of those 

 who collect "romantic geography." A friend of Sjxjke might wonder whether 

 publication or non-])nblicati()n wjik the wiser courKe. I'ooriJalton, endeavouring 

 to still the tight and i)e fair to hol/i men, had indeed his Seylla and ( 'harylKlis 

 to steer between ! The trials of an editor are manifold, but the trials of an 

 editorial committee must be computed by multiplication not by division. 

 The ship had too many first rank conunodores aljoard, and no one whose 

 livelihood depended on a successful voysige. It is small wonder that it never 

 reache<l port. J'eri'dt Lector, Natura rctitn/nt'. 



Many yeai"8 later Galton was again an editor. In 1901 he consented to 

 be "Consulting Editor" of Hiometrika, a post, I think, he appreciated' though 

 t]»e acting e(htors did not trouble him much. The 'j»ink sheets' with resumes 

 of tlie conclusions reached in the papers of each part, which were features of 

 the earlier volumes, were undertaken at his suggestion'. 



The contents of this chapter will probably lead the reader to think we 

 must have exhausted Galton's activities and labours during the twenty yeare 

 that followed his marriage; on the contrary we have hardly considered a 

 moiety of them, and those which remain to be discussed are of the greater 

 importance. 



' The Reader expired in 1866 ; Nature with an almost identical science programme appeared 

 in November 1869, with Nonnan Ijockyer as sole editor. But the introduction was l>y Huxley 

 ("half a century hence curious readers will prohalily look at our best, not witho\it a smile" i, and 

 Galton, Wallace, Darwin, G. H. Lewe.s, Sir William Thomson, Tylor, lialfour Stewart, Roscoe, 

 etc., all the crew of the old Reader manned the new vessel and helped to steer its course into 

 smooth waters. 



■•' He inserts it as an it«'m in his list of memoirs {Memories, p. 330), and included it in a 

 privately printed list of "Biographical Events." 



' Galton's journalistic suggestions were often of surprising originality when they were made, 

 but will now seem commonplaces. Thus his idea of weather charts in the daily press, unthought 

 of when he made it (1868); the idea that foreign and colonial books especially were not, but 

 ought to be, adequately noticed in the English press; that new maps ought to be reviewed 

 and criticisotl; that as to "Blue Books, no notices of them were published except in a list at 

 the beginning and end of the session or very rarely at other times although 50 volumes ap- 

 peared a year, but they ought to be continually reviewed"; that a list of uew publications 

 ought to be i.ssued weekly under a suitable classification (1864, I cite from Galton's suggestions 

 for The Reader) ; these ideas were practically novelties when Galton propounded them. Like 

 forks and brooms they are such commonplaces of our traditional culture to-day, that not one 

 person in a hundi-ed feels any gratitude to the unknown originator. 



