Karlfi A tit/nofio/dt/icaf JitMt-arc/itM 125 



whi'ii undertaken by a man of keen inHi^ht'. If the social conditionR be 

 such that young mothers with a sUghtly postponed age at marriage are 

 collected in one district and old mothers with no such postponement in a 

 second, it is clear that the fertility of the first would appear very nitioh 

 larger than the second, and need not in any way \ie due to differenoes in 

 environment. The (juestion of whetiier a town population is decadent is 

 really not touched by this paper; that the gross fertility was less in Galton's 

 instance he demonstrated, but gross fertility means very little without a 

 knowledge of the distribution of the ages and durations of marriage in the 

 population. The main value of the paper lies in Galton's recognition of the 

 problem as of first-class importance. 



The idea of the above paper — comparison of the efiect of town and 

 country life — was the basis of another paper by Galt-on at a somewhat 

 later date. It is entitled " On the Height and Weight of Boys aged 14 in 

 Town and Country Public Schools"''. Galton's conclusion in this paper is as 

 follows : 



"It appears that the boys of the above-mentioned ages in the country group are 1| inch 

 taller than those in the town group, and Tibs, heavier; also tliat this difference of height is 

 due, in alwut equal degrees, to rctaniation and to total suppression of growth ; and lastly, tliat 

 the distribution of heights in both cases conforms well to the results of the 'Law of Error'." 

 (p. 174».) 



Galton appears to have been inclined to ascribe the difi'erentiation as not 



"altogether due to bad effects of nurture on the individual boys" but "much of it to the town- 

 life of their parents, and probably of other ancestors." (p. 181.) 



Galton's tlata for country schools consist in the measurement of '296 boys 

 aged 14 at Clifton, Eton, Haileybur}', Marlborough and Wellington, i.e. 

 essentially of boys of the Upper Middle, professional and administrative 

 classes. His town boys are from Christ's Hospital, City of London School, 

 King Edward's School at Birmingham and Livei"pool College ; these schools 

 in 1871 drew boys largely from the Lower Middle, shopkeeping, clerking 

 and similar classes. Galton's conclusion that the boys of the former series of 

 schools were of better physi(jue woukl, I feel sure, be confinned to-day, but, 

 1 think, it is a class and not an environmental distinction. He did not reoord 

 the categories of town and country origin in the boys at these schools, but 

 only says that it is fair to assume their origins in bulk to be country and 

 town respectively. Again, I think, although Tie made some, he did not make 

 adequate allowance for the fact, that while in the first grade public schools 

 the most numerous boys were those aged 15, in the lower grade public 

 schools, the town schools, the boys of 14 and in the case of Birmingham 

 the boys of 13 are most numerous. In other words, at 14 the boys are 



' The President of the Royal Statistical Society cited it on February 16, 1922 at the 

 Galton Centenary Celebration of the London Eugenics Education Society, witboat a word of 

 comment or of caution in his speech. Eugenics Refieu\ Vol. xiv, p. 4. 



• JonriMl of the Rot/al Anthropological Institute, Vol. v, 1876, pp. 174-80. 



' We have in this paper an earlj- practical application of Galton's method of percentilee ; 

 the 'median' and the 'quartiles' are provided. 



