Characterisation, especially by Letters -465 



42, Rutland Gate, 8.W. August 1, 1876. 



My dear George, Mrs Jebb'a account of tho twins and the way she puts it, is most 

 striking. How one wishes one could have such a case under close examination. A single 

 instance verified in a large number of particulars would carry such immense weight. Thanks 

 very many for sending it to me. 



What a pleasant Autumn you have before you. We shall not meet first, as we leave 

 Town to-day week (Aug. 8) to stay with Judge Grove and thence on Aug. 24 we go abroad to 

 the Tyrol. 



I am rejoiced at the fair promise of all your earth axis work and especially at the fact that 

 you can do so much without being upset by it. What laborious work it must have been. 



I have just left Hooker at the Club, very matrimonial-looking, studying the Bravo case*. 



Ever yours, Francis G Alton. 

 To George Darwin, Esq. 



42, Rutland Gate, S.W. January 5, 1877. 



My DBAH Geobqe, How wonderfully inventive you are. I am most anxious to learn your 

 plan about the curve-drawing. 



May I venture to trouble you with a request, not a great one? It is to look through a short, 

 clearly written (orthographieally, I mean) memoir on "Typical Laws of Descent" which I pro- 

 pose sending to the Royal Society and which would occupy four to five pages of the Proceedings, 

 and tell me if it is sufficiently intelligible. 



You did me real good service in burking my memoir of last year. This is certainly very 

 much better than that, but tell me — is it good enough? I will send it at once, if you will have 

 it. Affectionately yours, Francis Galtox. 



P.S. Pencil anything you like on it. If possible I want to send it in soon to the Royal 

 Society so as to be read before my February 9 lecture. 

 To George Darwin, Esq. 



42, Rutland Gate, S.W. January 12, 1877. 



My dear Geobgb, How can I thank you sufficiently. I am aghast at the trouble nay 

 unlucky memoir gives, and at the great pains you have taken to put clearness into it. I will 

 certainly adopt your suggestions generally and rewrite the thing. 



Let me mention an illustration of one of the principles (Family Variation), which I think 

 may interest you. You recollect that apparatus of mine with the shot; — well, suppose I want 

 to show by a modification of it, how it comes to pass that when the ordinates of an exponic t 



^n#TJTTTnW 



mountain subside, each of them, into an exponic hillock, as in the sketch, the sum of the 

 hillocks is an exponic curve of larger modulus. 



In I (see p. 466), I pour shot, and it makes an exponic heap at the bottom. In II, I have cut 

 the apparatus across at AH, and have interposed a row of vertical 



compartments with trap door bottoms that I can pull out and in 



B 



Jb' 



i in a temporary landing for the shot, when I so desire. If these 

 are open, the shot falls through and of course makes an exponic 

 mountain at the bottom of II, exactly as it did in I. But if they A' 

 are closed, they intercept the shot and an exponic mountain (of less 



* A famous trial of that day ; Mrs Bravo was tried for poisoning her husband. 



t I do not remember Galton using this word elsewhere as an abbreviation for "exponen- 

 tial." It seems itself slightly "out of place." 



pgiii 59 



