Corn'H/Ktmlnn'f irlth AlphiniKf ilv ('tintlo/t*- 149 



religious, jK>liticjil institutions, family and national traditions, etc. Before 

 his work wa« issued Darwin first and then TJalton flared up on his horizon 

 and tlie wholf aspect of tlic country ho was investigating app«'ared rjinrrent. 

 His hook wlien it was written l)ecanie a coniproinist> In'twcen the old aspect 

 and the new. It is, as Galton says, "deficient in method" -markedly sc, I 

 may add, from the statistical stan<l[)oint, — but neverthele.s8 full of suggestion 

 even to-day for more eflective iiKpiiry. 



This somewhat lengthy digression oi» De Candolle is needful, not only 

 because it ctusts light on both men's letters, but also on the influence Galton 

 exercised over De Candolle, as well as the incentive the latter'a book gave 

 Galton's own closer inquiry, not only in English Men of Science, but also in 

 the much later attemi)ts he made to consider ability more generally in the 

 material collected in this century, and partly published \n Notable Families\ 

 In this, however, Galton was merely extending, by aid of distributing 

 questionuftires, the ideas and methods of his IlereiUtnry (renins. Galton in 

 the case of English Men of Science circularised a select list of 180 men of 

 science — not all the members of the Royal Society. His schedule was a 

 very lengthy one, and dealt not only with ancestry and education, but with 

 many physical and mental charactei"s classed in broad categories. As a rule 

 he had about 90 — 100 cases with reliable information under each character 

 heading. Perhaps the modern reader is most struck by the comparative 

 paucity of datti, or of statistical theory, which Galton thought needful for 

 drawing conclusions. But actual investigation by more elaborate methods 

 a|)pears to confirm most of his results. He reached very often a con- 

 clusion, since proven, by what we may term a sound statistical instinct. 

 I will illustrate this in two instances. He is considering whether in marriage 

 "the love of contrast" do&s or does not "prevail over that of harmony'." 

 He has only 62 cases of the statures of lx)th parents, and he concludes 

 by a very rough process that there is no sexual preference for contrast in 

 height (pp. 31-32). I have worked out the con-elation in stature between 

 husband and wife for his data, and find it +'19 ± "08, which shows that there 

 probably existed a slight preference for harmony and this is well in jiccord 

 with more recent determinations of the intensity of assortative mating. Again 

 in 99 ciises he had measures of the horizontal circumference of the head of 

 men of science and 40 of these were men of great energy. From the data 

 that of 13 men of 22" or less circumference there were 10 of these energetic 

 men, and that of 8 men of 24" or more circumference there was only one 

 of these very energetic men, Galton concludes that "although the average 

 circumference of head among the scientific men is great'," there is a "cor- 



' Iswued in conjunction with Edgar Schuster, nnd re-issued recently in the Galton Labora- 

 tory Ftiblicaturtis, l^anibriilgc University Press. 



" Galton's book contains the first tables for assortative mating in t«niperaine«t, hair colour, 

 figure and statui-e, although liased on small nunilx^rs, and only rinluced by considering per- 

 centages of 'harmonies' and 'contnusts.' 



' This conclusion seems to lie founded on the statement "that the average circumference of an 

 English gentleman's head is 22^ to 22i inches" (p. 99). If this be taken as 22-3«", Galton's value 



