156 Life and Letters of Francin Galton 



for 8ucoi«iiful followers of science, it ih to be hoped thnt in nddition to the many new openings 

 in industrial pursuitK, the gradual but Hure development of sanitary administration anci statis- 

 tical inquiry may in time afford the nee<Ied profession. These and a<lequately paid professor- 

 ships may, as I sineen-ly hope they will, even in our day, give rise to the esUiblisliinent of a 

 sort of s<'ientific priesthixnl throughout the kingdom, whose high duties would have reference 

 to the hejkllh and well-being of the nation in its broadest sense, and whose emoluments and 

 social position would be made commensurate with the im]>ortance and variety of their functions." 

 (pp. 258-60.) 



Much of what Galton wished in 1874 to see achieved has since been 

 done, although plenty remains to occuj^y fully the attention of educational 

 reformers. It is singular, however, to note now little Galton 's services to 

 educational refonn have been recognised, and yet in this book he is voicing 

 the opinions of a very large section of the scientific men of that day ; and 

 these views filtered down through the press until they ultimately reached 

 the politician. The la.st sentence but one appealing for development of 

 sanitary adnjinistration and statistical inquiry finds Galton on common 

 ground with Florence Nightingale — a link to which we shall return later. 

 But alas! their dreams are still far from realisation; it is still held laughable 

 to suggest that the statistician is a fundamental need, if we are to under- 

 stand what makes for or mars the health and well-being of our nation in its 

 broadest sense. 



B. DARWIN AND THE PANGENESIS EXPERIMENTS 



As Gralton's views on heredity brought him to a certain extent into 

 conflict with De Candolle, so also they brought hini at an even earlier date 

 into a disagreement with Charles Darwin. At the end of 1 8()9 as a result 

 of his discussion of pangenesis in the Chapter entitled 'General Considera- 

 tions' of Hereditary O'enius, Galton determined to test experimentally 

 Darwin's 'provisional' hypothesis. In that discussion Galton directly speaks 

 of gemmules circulating in the blood (see our p. 113). Although Darwin read 

 this book, I can find no trace of a letter at that date repuuiating the idea 

 of circulation in the blood being the essential method of transfer of gemmules. 

 From December 1869 to June 1870 I find twelve letters of Galton to Darwin 

 about the experiments on transfusion of blood. That Darwin answered some, 

 perhaps all, of these letters is clear, but I have not succeeded in finding any 

 replies. It is possible that after the letters to Nature of 1871, Galton de- 

 stroyed them. At any rate in the list of Darwin letters prepared in 1890 by 

 Galton himself none of these letters are referred to. All the Darwin nibbit 

 letters that have survived are those which followed the publication of 

 Galton's paper "Experiments in Pangenesis by Breeding from Babbits of 

 a pure variety, into whose circulation blood taken from other varieties had 

 previously been largely transfused." Tliis was read at the Iloyal Society on 

 March 30, 1871^ These letters refer to a continuation of the experiments, 



been aelf-taught and was due to his following up of an innate taste for science, and Gallon 

 expressed himself in much the same language: see our Vol. I, p. 12. 

 ' hoyal Soc. I'roe. Vol. XIX, pp. ."SIH-JKt, 1871. 



