226 Life and Letters of Francis Galton 



Gallon exhibited cakes of Roman enamel snitable for anthropometric 

 standards of colour'. And then in this century we have the idea carried oiit 

 by a German with German made mosaics, and no one gives Galton credit for 

 originating the idea! 



I cannot-trace that Galton got either the simple Topinard hair scale, or 

 Broca's scale reproduced in mosaics. Before the war I foiuid that painted scales 

 sent to Berlin were very speedily and accurately matched in mosaics. 



It seems in place here to sunnnarise a further j)aper of a later date "On 

 recent Designs for Anthropometric Instruments" in so far as it deals with 

 the subject of oin- present chapter'. The pioneer work of Galton is here 

 recognised to the full. His instruments had passed from South Kensington 

 to Cambridge, and an anthropometric laboratory had been opened there. 

 Messrs Horace Darwin and Dew Smith were Improving old and devising new 

 anthropometric instruments in Cambridge, and a <:ood deal of this pajier 

 concerns their work. 



A Japanese professor had sent Galton money to provide an outfit for an 

 anthropometric laboratory in Tokio. Professor Giuseppe Sergi wished to add 

 to his anthropological cabinet a set of instruments suitable for school work, 

 and desired Galton to select a list for him. Topinard, one of the leading French 

 anthropologists, wrote : 



"I have written nothing as yet concerning physiological instructions to travellers, awaiting 

 a convenient moment for doing so. I am disposed to take directly your system, and will ask to 

 have all your apparatus sent to me. We possess no samples of colours for hair and eyes beyond 

 the polychromatic table of Broca, which the Anthropological Institute employs, but I am about 

 to undertake new work of this kind, and intend shortly to have some samples made; but not 

 many of them, probably five for eyes and five for hair. My present diflicuJly is to select the 

 exact sha<les and tints; if you have yourself made any such set-s, I should be much obliged if 

 you would let me have one." (p. 4.) 



The impetus given by Gallon's anthropometric laboratories was indeed 

 universal, and he was admitted then to have led the way in this matter, 

 an admi&sion which has been almost overlooked since. 



Among mattei's which concern us in this chapter are standards for hair 

 and eye colours. Here Galton directly suggests "glass spun by a glass 

 blower for comparison with hair." Thus before 1886 he had proposed sets 

 of standard glass eyes, mosaics for skin colour and spun glass for hair; 

 all three of these suggestions have been carried out in this century — by 

 Germans — in the well-known eye-scale of Professor 11. Martin, in Professor 

 von Luschan's skin-scale and Professor G. Fischer's glass-silk hair scale. 

 Thus the best of what we can do now, was suggested by Galton twenty 

 to thirty years earlier. 



Horace Darwin showed (i) a very simple chronograph designed by Francis 

 Galton, (ii) an instrument for measuring the relative sensitiveness of the eye 

 to various colours, designed at the suggestion of Galton, and (iii) an instru- 

 ment for testing an individual's keenness in distinguishing small differences 



' The t)riginalH are not in the Galtnniann, and I have not Kuccf«ded in tracing them. 

 • Journal of the AnlhrupologicdL Jtislitule, Vol. xvi, pp. 2-9, 1886. 



