CHAPTER II 



BIOMETRIC IDEAS AND METHODS IN BIOLOGY 

 THEIR SIGNIFICANCE AND LIMITATIONS 1 



THE last twenty years have witnessed the origin 

 and development of what amounts to a new branch 

 of biological inquiry; namely, biometry. This 

 subdivision of biological science, which has within 

 this period come to be practically a distinct and 

 separate Fach, may fairly be said to have taken its 

 origin at about the year 1895 in the pioneer in- 

 vestigations of Pearson and Weldon. In making 

 this statement there is no implication that there 

 had not been important quantitative work in 

 biology, of one kind or another, before 1895. There 

 certainly had been a considerable amount of such 

 work. It had, however, fallen in special and 

 rather restricted fields. Most important in this 

 earlier quantitative biology are probably to be 

 reckoned the studies of the anthropologists. In 

 this field the work of Quetelet and of Galton 

 stands preeminent. The work of these men, and 

 in particular that of Galton, indeed served in 



1 This paper, in somewhat modified form, was first published in 

 Scientist, Vol. X, 1911. 



42 



