224 Life ami Letters of Francis Gallon 



amount of dye. Oalton felt keenly the need for a standard and permanent 

 8«>t of colours, and made a suggestion on this point of great value. In 1S69 

 he had been struck by the great variety of permanent colours which are 

 produced for niasjiic work. He had l)een over the Juihbrica of mo.saic8 

 attachetl to the Vaticjin and seen their '^5,000 numbered trays or bin.s of 

 coloured mosaic. He realised at once the opportunity thus afforded not only 

 for the establishment of a general colour scale in this country, but, as the 

 mosaics were manufactured for the representation of human hgures among 

 other things, for skin, hair and eye-colour scales for anthropometric purposes'. 

 On Feb. 3, 1870, Galton sent the following letter to the Science and Art 

 Department, South Kensington. I cite from a rough draft in the Galtoni<ina: 



"Certain scientific inquiries in wliich I am engaged have brought forcibly before my notice 

 the great desideratum of being able to obtain an accepted standard scale of colours, by i-eferenco 

 to which a person's meaning might be expressed with precision whenever he desired to designate 

 a particular hue or tint. The exhibition of such a standard would fall, I venture to say, most 

 legitimately within the province of the South Kensington Museum, and I will now show how 

 very easily and efficiently this desideratum miglit be 8upplie<l. In the Fabhrica of mosaics at 

 the Vatican in Rome there are no less than 25 thousand trays or bins, numbered consi-cutively, 

 and each filled with cakes of mosaic material, each separate bin l>eiug devoted to a diflerent 

 colour. The workers on the mosaics in the Fubbricn send, as they rinjuire, to the sui)erintendent 

 of this department for so mimy pounds weight fi-om such and such specifi<'<i bins, the colours 

 they want being solely expressed by the numlx^i-s attached to the bins. I have read cursory 

 accounts of this large and most remarkable factory iind I have visittxl it myself as an ordinary 

 though much interested sightseer, but I cannot find any full description of its management 

 either in the Art Library of the South Kensington Museum, or elsewhere. However it may 

 be taken for granted that the facts of the case are substantially as I have stated them. 



Now I l>eg to propose that the authorities of the South Kensington Art Department should 

 make application to the Pope for mosaic tablets containing in order specimens of each of thoir 

 25 tliousand bins to be suspended in the Museum for the pur|)Ose of reference as a standard of 

 colour." 



Galton then proceeds to discuss the space that such a scale of colour 

 would occupy; if each fragment of mosaic were 1" x \", the space recjuired 

 would be about ten sfjuare yards. Supjwsing we arranged our tablets in 

 series of 10 in file and 10 in rank, we should have for 20 rows deep, a length 

 of al)out 52 feet for the scale. For square sj)ecimens ^" x ^", wliich would 

 probably be adequate, with 40 rows deep, the length of the scale would be 

 aljtjut seven yards. Galton continues : 



"It might be disposed as a frieze running along the wall at a height convenient for reference, 

 the bits of mosaic perhaps arninged in tablets of 100 containing 10 ranks and 10 files, with 

 dark lines at the .'ith division each way for convenience of iniine<liati>ly ascertaining the number 

 appertaining to each several bit 



The Fablirica at the Vatican is maintainc<) by the Papal Government solely for the purpose 

 of inoKaics for public buildings in the Ilonian States and for making gifts to foreign poteiiUites. 

 Presents of art works are given in this way that re<|uir(Ml, 1 am afraid to say how many seixiratc 

 pieces of material for their construction and that have demanded tin; lifetime of a skilled artist 

 for their completion. But the series of tablets of which I speak would l)e far more easily made. 



' Many years after Oalton's suggestion Pn)fessor von Luschan's useful mo.saic .skin colour 

 scale oaine into existence. T have also procured mosaics from the Ho/Fabrik in Berlin and 

 fonnerl pennanent scales for coat colour in mammals. (lalton's jiroposal was a most fruitful 

 one, and it is to be regretted that it wa« never carried out in its entirety. 



