Eugenics as a Creed and, the Last Decade of Galton's Life 275 



of differences in parental qualities* and (ii) a thorough study of characters 

 in Eurasians in order to test the applicability of the Mendelian hypothesis to 

 man. 



V. A Bibliography of papers bearing on Eugenic topics is desirable. 

 Many papers already exist, published in scientific transactions and journals, 

 which bear on the Eugenists' problems; such a bibliography should include 

 papers of breeders and horticulturists. Considering the enormous development 

 nowadays of Genetics it would probably be well to treat separately Genetics 

 and Eugenics. 



VI. Co-operation between students of Eugenics. Probably Galton had 

 in mind here special journals, societies, and congresses. 



VII. Certificates of Eugenic fitness. To these we shall return later. 



It will be seen that Galton's programme did not lack comprehensiveness. 



Another event of this year was the invitation to Galton to accept the 

 Presidency of the British Association at the York Meeting in 1906. It is 

 desirable to indicate that it was not from want of asking — and even of gentle 

 pressure — -that the Association missed the honour of numbering Francis 

 Galton among its past presidents. In this he stands with his cousin Charles 

 Darwin; the names of two of the most original scientists of the Victorian epoch 

 fail to appear on the presidential roll. 



The following letters received by Galton on May 8 and answered on 

 May 9 explain the situation. 



British Association for the Advancement of Science. May 5, 1905. 



Dear Mr Galton, At the meeting of the Council of the British Association held at 

 Burlington House this afternoon, it was unanimously resolved that you be nominated as 

 President of the British Association for the meeting to be held at York in 1906. The proposal 

 was received by the Council most cordially, and the officers were instructed to communicate 

 with you and ascertain whether you will agree to the nomination. 



* I do not know on what Galton's suspicion rested of a marked influence on the characteristic 

 (c) of a child, if there was a great difference (8) between the paternal (f) and maternal (to) 

 characteristics. Theoretically, if « be the coefficient of assortative mating, r of parental heredity 

 supposed the same for both parents, a- a standard deviation, and r Sc the correlation of 8 and c, 

 then : 



V("/- Vm)* + 2o /0"m (1 - «) 



Since the coefficients of variation are nearly the same in man and woman, we have, if M l and M, 

 are mean values in father and mother, 



r *- r J Sf l+ (M t -M t f ■ 



In the case of absolute measurements in man and woman, M l = (\ + T ^) M 2 and e = -2 roughly. 



Accordingly r ho ~r v. -069 = -03, approximately. 



Hence, statistically, there is no significant influence of the difference of parental characters on 

 the character of the child. Physiologically, of course, there may be some influence of extreme 

 differences, but such being rare it may not be detectable in the statistical treatment. 



35—2 



