242 Life and Letters of Francis Galton 



to them. Much of the data has never been publislied ; Galton continued to col- 

 lect for a revised edition of the Inquiries which he never issued. In particular 

 there is a docket denlinjj; with heredity in number forms, and he accumulated 

 much evidence to show — not that the particular number forms — but that the 

 tendency to visualise numlxjrs runs \n families. Before he discussed the 

 matter in his Inquiries into Hunuin FaniUij, he published two memoirs on 

 the topic. The firet, entitled " Visualisetl Numerals," appeared in Nature 

 Jan. 15, 1880', And the second, with the siime title, in the Journal of the 

 Anthropological Institute, being a paper read on March !», 1880'. At this 

 time Galton had collected eighty such numl>er forms and he found that alx)ut 

 one pereon in thirty adult males and one in fifteen adult females possessed a 

 number form. Among children they appeared to be more frecjuent, but were 

 less fixed and distinct and tended to fade away with age. The 'form,' Galton 

 considered, was of an older date than that at which a child began to learn to 

 read, and repiesented his mental processes at a time of which no other record 

 remains (./. A. 1. p. 93 and especially Nature, p. 495). The 'forms,' he held, 

 were the most remarkable existing instances of what has been termed "topical 

 memory," the establishment of an association between position and the tiling 

 to be remembered; a link emphasised by teachers of mnemonics when they 

 advise speakers to associate mentjilly the corners ol' a room with the different 

 topics of a speech they are about to deliver. Discussing the relative frequency 

 of number forms in the two sexes Galton writes : 



"I have been astonished to find how superior women usually are to men in the vividness 



of their mental imagery and in their jKjwers of introspection I find the attention of 



women, especially women of ability, to be instantly aroused by these iiKjuiries. They eagerly 

 and carefully address themselves to consider their modes of thought, they put pertinent 

 questions, they suggest tests, they express themselves in well-weighed language and with 

 liappy turns of expression, and they are evidently masters of the art of introspection. I do 

 not find any peculiar tendency to exaggeration in this matter either among women or men ; 

 the only difference 1 have observed between them is that the former usually show an unexpected 

 amount of intelligence, while many of the latter are uncxp<H;tedly obtuse. The mental difference 

 between the two sexes seems wider in the vividness of their mental imagery and the power of 

 intnwpecting it than in respect to any other combination of nicntal faculties of which I can 

 think." (Naturt, p. 252.) 



The paper read before the Anthropological Institute was not only fuller 

 than that in Nature, but wiis of special interest because Mr George Bidder, 

 Colonel Yule, the Rev. G. Henslow, Mr (now Sir) Arthur Schuster, and others 

 each descriljed their own nimiber forms. It would seem that these gentlemen 

 were unaware, until Francis CJalton began his inquiry, that there was any- 

 thing unusual in the possession of a number form. This experience I also 

 have had not infrequently, when I have found a person with a number form ; 

 he seemed to suppose everybody had a numl>er form, and to be rather 

 incredulous when I asserted that this was not so. Galton himself, it is of 

 interest to note, did not visualise numerals. He writes : 



• Vol. XXI, pp. 252-3, 323, 494-5. = Vol. x, pp. 85-102. The copies of both 



theae memoirs in the Galtoniana contain the nauies of the various contributors of number 

 forms. 



