Sfafittfical luve«tif/ntioiis 361 



There is an interesting paragraph as to fraud : 



"An ref;iir(l.s the iiroluililn trustwurthitioMH of the iriforiiintioii rrccived, I iiiii |M'rff?<.lly aware 

 tliat IV iiuxlcni Dt- Ki>o or Swift niifjlit write nri irilfrcstiii>{ roiimncc, ami make a rpgintcr 

 apparently true to life, wholly out of liis own head; l>ut l>e K<m's an<l Swifts an- not common, 

 and Kucli persons would ho Hure to tind hett<«r occupation than that. Moreover they could not 

 Hain a prize witliout eomniittiuK u downrij{ht fraud. Able nifn are generally al)ove petty 

 tricks, and there will Ix; ahiindant internal evidence in every register U) show whether the 

 writer Ikj ahle or not. It is alino.st needless to remark, that every stAtiKtician worthy of the 

 name is wary and slow to accept startling conclusions without much indircH-t confirmation.... 

 What I fear most is that the registers sent by many of the candidates will afTonl internal 

 evidence of Ix-ing little trustworthy, not tlirough delilu'rate intent, l)Ut owing to the incapacity 

 of the writers to state their cases clearly, and to supi^rt their statements with judiciously 

 .selecte<l <lat«." (pp. 248-9.) 



Perhaps this hitter remark w.is rather severe on the profession to whom 

 Galton was appeuHng for aid ; it failed to give due weight to what should be 

 the effect of the chnical training in a hospital on a man's powers of obser- 

 vation, record and deduction. Yet our poor hero saw with yearning those 

 23,000 tjuallHed medical men and thought here at last was a source of the 

 material essential to his work ! 



"I should hope that the examination would be complete after some three months' labour 

 of myself and the examiners. The prizes being allotted and done with, it will remain to work 



up the results The statistical meal will be a large one; I gloat over it in anticipation, and 



know that it will take long to digest. I cannot doubt that new ideas will be derived from a 

 careful study of .so unique a collection, enough I hope to justify to myself the cost and time 

 sjH'nt on it. When I shall have done with this collection, its ultimate destination will probably 

 be lus a gift to some appropriate medical or anthropological institution. It will then be in the 

 form of anonymous documents lx>aring mottoes, but with no mark l)y which any one of them 

 could l)e distinguished.. ..Considering that prizes for essays usually attract numerous com- 

 petitors, although the pains taken in working for them are rather barren of result except to 

 the winners, I ccmclude that similar prizes leading to intpiiries beneficial in every case, and 

 from many points of view, ought to attract yet more numerous candidates, and to result in 

 proflucing shelves full of family histories of unprece<iente<l complet«>ness and concentration, and 

 of extreme value for a limg time to come to medical an<l anthropological investigators." (p. 2.50.) 



What killed this scheme of prizes to the doctors for medical registers of 

 their families? I can find but one further i-eference to it (see our p. 367). 

 All letters for the year 1883 seem to be wanting; so that we cannot trace the 

 causes which led Galton to drop the emphasis on the medical register and 

 offer his prizes for family records to laymen as well as medical men. Three 

 extracts from L. G.'s Record may be given here as conveying about all the 

 knowledge we have of the matter: 



"1882. Frank l)egan his book on I/timau Factilty e»,r\y in the year and it has gone on 

 through the year, and was a great ]>astime to him during our summer ramble on the Rhine, 

 in the Black Forest, Constance, and lastly Axenfels. Kad weather haunted us, but we were 

 happy anfl 1 kept well and t)egan sketching again. It was such a Ixwn not to Ihj kept by a 

 British Association Meeting this summer. Mr Darwin's death in May had cast a deep gloom 



over us Besides what I have mentioned as to Frank's work during the year he gave a 



Lecture at Eton on Anthropometric Registers and Life Histories, and wrote a paper in the 

 Fortnightly on the sivme, and gave a lecture to the Committee of the Medical A.ssociation'. 

 He was invitefl to lecture at the Lowell Institution in America, but refused. In Meteorology 

 he designed a clock for cumulative temperature. He is elected on to the Council of the Royal 

 Society and was begge«i to accept the presidency of the Anthropologicjil, but refusetl. 



' Pi-obalily the Committee of the B.M.A. for Collective Investigation. 

 van 46 



