Eugenics as a Creed and the Last Decade of Galton's Life 325 



told that the wife's virtue was not beyond question and that she had had a fancy for a heterozygous 

 paramour ! That point has indeed already been suggested in this inquiry ! 



I have been rather pleased. In my Homotyposis paper I dealt with sweet-peas and felt pretty 

 certain that they must be cross-fertilised, because of the numerical constants. Of course it 

 looks commonsense from the blended forms one sees everywhere. But Darwin in Cross and Self 

 Fertilisation of Plants strongly believes that in England they are not so. Now I have watched 

 the whole process here. The bee works in a sort of frantic manner, pushes both flaps down 

 and the pistil rises from its case, and usually he sweeps both sides of it with his hind legs. 

 The bees I have seen have their belly and the whole of their hind legs covered with the pollen 

 of the sweet-pea, and there is not the least doubt that there must be a great deal of cross 

 fertilisation. Darwin speaks of the difficulty of access of the bee, but it is singular that with 

 his great accuracy of observation he should have missed the simplicity of the whole thing. It 

 is really rather striking to watch the bee at work. If you have any sweet-peas in that beautiful 

 Yaffles garden, do try and confirm my observation. Affectionately yours, Karl Pearson. 



I am not sure that this bee is the ordinary hive bee ; it looks a somewhat stouter insect, 

 but of much the same type. I have not seen more than two working at the same time on a long 

 row of sweet-peas, although there might be 5 or 6 at the same instant on a small lavender 

 bush, but these bees would, I found, very quickly visit 20 or 30 flowers*. 



Yaffles, Hindhead, Haslemere, S.O. August 30, 1907. 

 My dear Karl Pearson, The caricature of you is uncommonly good, though of course not 

 flattering. Even the upper part of the back is distinctive, but the remainder of the dwarfed 

 body is not good. I will keep it, if you don't want it back. 



Schuster's paper in the Eugenics Laboratory Publications reached me yesterday and very 

 interesting it is. I will write to him. I shall be very glad to see Heron's paper "in slip." 



About the sweet-peas, when I reared them all those years ago, I selected them on the 

 advice of both Hooker and Darwin, and was assured also that in nursery gardens rows of peas 

 of different colours were often planted side by side, and that no cross fertilisation was ever 

 observed. But I have with my own eyes seen, as you have, bees (of some kind) visiting flowers 

 in succession without, or with little, regard to their colours and supposed their visits to be 

 innocuous, though why, I have never been able to understand. There are only a few sweet-peas 

 here, at the bottom of the garden, and no hive bees anywhere about, but bees of alien kinds, 

 so I cannot easily repeat your observation in respect to hive bees. 



It was a very great pleasure to see you last Saturday, and to have a long talk. To-day, we 

 drove to Linchmere and saw in the church a brass tablet to Salvin (the S. American botanist, 

 who had a property near here). You may recollect him at the meetings of the R. S. Evolution 

 Committee. He was usually reticent but very helpful on occasions and always a thorough 

 gentleman. Ever affectionately yours, Francis Galton. 



On and after Thursday Sept. 12 — Quedley, Shottermill, Haslemere. 



Yaffles. Sept. 8, 1907. 



My dear Karl Pearson, I have rented the above house for 2 months certain, with 

 option of continuing through the winter. It is pretty and has If acres lawn and garden with a 

 well-warmed greenhouse into which the drawing-room opens. So I have a fair chance of pulling 

 through the winter in it. What "Quedley" means, I don't yet know. I gather from a letter 

 from Gifi that the new part of Biometrika is out and has been received in Rutland Gate. If so, 

 it will soon reach me. I see that Schuster's article has attracted favourable newspaper notice. 

 The enclosed (don't return it) is a good example. 



All goes on quietly here. I have at last got into good working order a method of " lexicon- 

 ising " silhouettes. I can't conceive why artists and anthropologists have never succeeded in 

 sharply determining points of reference in the human features, when it is so easy to obtain 

 them by the intersection of tangents. The enclosed (don't return it) shows my primary tri- 

 angulation. The C, N and F (obtained by intersections) are closely approximate expressions for 

 the tip of chin, of nose, and of " nasion " (to adopt the word you used). With a small repertory of 

 descriptive symbols, I find it feasible to give a formula for any profile, whence a very respectable 

 duplicate of it can easily be drawn. Types of races ought to be readily defined and compared 



* See the present volume, pp. 6-7. 



