;U0 Liff ami l^i llcis of' /''riiiiri.s d'ti/foii 



was black on olio siili', and llie sillmuctto timt liiul Im-cii cut out wiis pastud llicn iiiul there, 

 with the hhK-k siiie upwanls, ujxm a whit*' caitl, and fi-nnii>d. A pcrfectlj* durabh^ and often 

 a good likeness was tlieivby |>nKiuc«l in a very sliort time. Tliis art was supei-seded by plioto- 

 graphy, and is now teni|)urarily extinct ; but I want to .-.how that it might with great facility — 

 and I think with wme profit in a humble way — Jie advantageously re-introduced by the help of 

 the very agency that extinguished it." 



Galton next suggests photographing the profile of a sitter, eitlier in a 

 strong light Jtgsiinst a darK baclcgrouncl, or rice versd, and then taking a 

 print of tiiis result, cutting out the profile and blackening it'. In his second 

 letter Galton gives an example ol* a silhouette prepared in this way. Such 

 silhouettes are, he says, 



"pjirticularly useful in studying family characteristics which, I think, are on the average far 

 better ol»ierve<l in profiles than in any other single view of the features. The truth of this 

 statement may be verified in church, where whole families, each occupying a pew, can often be 

 seen sideways, and each family can be taken in and it.s nu-mlwrs compared at a single glance. 





Ualton'g photographic silhouettes of himself, a^cd 65. 



The instances will l>e found numerous in which the profiles of a family arc curiously similar, 

 especially tha>m of the mother and her daughters. This is most noticeable where their ages aivd 

 Ixxlily shapes differ greatly, as when the daughters are partly children and j)artly slim j^'irls, 

 and the mother is nut sliiu at all." 



It nnist he admitted that ( Jalton went to chinch ratlier lor .scieiilitic liiau 

 religious purposes; hut the reiider of this ])a8sage will hardly be inclined to 

 accept Dr Beddoes' statement that Galton was wanting in a sense of humour! 

 See Vol. I, p. 51). 



Another photographic problem which occupied a good deal of Galton's 

 thoughts at one time was the problem of keeping the object and the focal 

 plane at the conjugate foci of the optical centre of the object-glass. This 



' If the sitter be place<l in front of a window, a half ])late will give a silhouette of aljout 

 four inches high, which is often a very characteristic ]M>rtrait. The chief need is the 'deft 

 hand' in cutting out the print and avoiding angles. In the Galton I.jil)orat<jry we have a 

 silhouetting arrangement in which the sitter's head is adjustt-*! to the 'Frankfurt horizontal 

 plane,' and the shadow is cast by an arc light some fifty yards away. The shadow is traced by 

 an artist's hand and the resulting silhouette preserve<i with the anthropometric records of the 

 subject. It is used for measurements and by compounding series of subjects to obtain typo 

 profiles. 



