282 Life and Letterg of Frauds Gaffoii 



lay strew on her power of aympathy. How I pulled through the terrible strain and hurried 

 requirementa uf the otx»sion I cannot conceive, but I did, tlianks largely U> the hearty and 

 tactful sympathy received from M"" de Fall)e and Mr Jetiiiiiigs, whii had iniide Louisa's 

 acquaintance and retunied to h»'lp. I could not leave lloyat on account of lotterH, till Tuesday 

 night, arriving in Ix)ndon Wed' afternoon, where the sympathy of Spencer, and Mary and of 

 Gertrude [Butler] await«d me. Some few days were spent in sorting her possessions and 

 carrying out Louisa's wishes. Then to dear Emma's at Leamington for a week; thence to the 

 Douglas Oaltons' at Himbleton also' for nearly a week; thence to Mrs Hills'' at Corby, all of 

 which greatly braced me. The general kindness of Louisa's and my relations was extreme. 

 On returning Sept. 13 Frank Butler was ready to live with me, a most valuable help against 



the sen.so of isolation My own occupations were the inquiries into the Bassett hounds, 



which led to the "Average CJonHtitution of each Ancestor etc." Proe. Hoy. Soc.'', also "Inquiries 

 into Spewl of American Trotters," /Vor. Roy. Soc.' and the method of photographic measure- 

 ment of horses etc., published to-day Jan. 7, '98*. The Committee on a Physical National 

 Laboratory has been appointed and is taking evidence. Tlie Evolution Committee has not 

 done much, Kew Observatory prospers; Meteorological Council, the usual routine" 



Thus it is when one of our number falls out, the ranks close up; social 

 life as a whole goes on; our intellectual tasks are resumed, and our thoughts 

 are turned again from the immediate environment to the non-personal 

 problems of science. Galton rarely referred to the personal in conversation, or 

 in letters, and it has seemed best to his biographer to maintain his reticence, 

 allowing merely the one entry with which ne concludes Louisa Galton's 

 Record to tell its own tale. 



To sum up the contents of this chapter, I venture to assert that no 

 psychologist, no statistician of energy and imagination can read its pages 

 and not feel that they have provided him witli suggestions of many still 

 unsolved problems, for whose solution the world would be not only the wiser 

 but the better. Such is always the outcome of Gralton's suggestive mind, 

 and it is on this account — the generosity of ideas — that the reader willingly 

 pardons an occasional conclusion based on apparently scanty data. Beyond 

 those data was always the rich experience of a mina during the whole of a 

 long life perpetually observing and placing in appropriate categories the 

 actions and thoughts of other men as well as of himself 



' Wife of Judge Hills of Alexandria, and daughter of Sir William Grove, Galton's close 

 friend A numlier of Galton's letters to Mrs Hills have recently been purchased from a book- 

 seller for the Galton Laboratory. 



» Vol. LXi, pp. 401-43. ' Vol. Lxii, pp. 310-15. 



* Galton probably wrote the last sentences of this entry on the day following that, Jan. 6, 

 on which he had started to give the account of Mrs Galton's death. 



