378 Life and Letters of Francis Galton 



7, Well Road, Hampstead, N.W. March 25, 1909. 



My dear Francis Galton, I have not yet seen the Eldertons' MS. but I suppose I shall 

 eventually. I shall be quite ready to publish it as a Laboratory publication if that seems 

 desirable to those concerned. I am not at all sure, however, that it would not be well to try it 

 with a good publisher first of all. It would save the expense of publication and get a reasonable 

 amount of notice from the Press and advertisement. I think Mr Elderton is a little frightened 

 of the idea of the Eugenics Education Society. The Society, / think, is doing good work, but 

 there are some names associated with it, that some people (probably without basis) fight shy 

 of, and of course he has to be rather cautious that he does not link himself with anything 

 that would affect his Office. Please remember I have no authority for this view, but it is a possible 

 inference from what I found was the feeling about the Eugenics Education Society publication 

 and I thought it might be worth suggesting as possible. You will no doubt consider the matter 

 all round. As I said, I am ready to do anything in regard to publication. 



You will be amused to see that you and I are " Moralstatistiker," whatever that may mean. 



We go away to Great Missenden on Friday, April 2nd. I hope the lumbago is now quite 

 mastered. Affectionately, Karl Pearson. 



I have sent in to the Royal a criticism of Darbishire's recent paper " An Experimental 

 Investigation of the Influence of Ancestry," which I should like to have your views on when 

 in type. I have also found out that while Mendelism gives — judged by somatic characters — a 

 correlation of J, if we correlate gametic characters, this rises to J, so that it is the assertion that 

 the hybrid shows the dominant character which makes the difference. 



Forest Park Hotel, Brockenhurst, Hants. April 4, 1909. 



My dear Karl Pearson, I put off writing until we were safely established here, where 

 we arrived yesterday and where two of my nearest relatives are coming to us for a few days. My 

 five weeks in Lyndhurst have been those of an invalid, but I already feel the good from a change 

 of air and am less pessimistic. You will be, I know, at Missenden, but your letter gave no more 

 exact address, so fearing miscarriage I send mine round by Hampstead. You have duly im- 

 pressed the Medical Gazette with the Eugenic microbe, I am glad to see. The proof sheets of 

 the Education Society's Review have at last reached me. It seems on the whole creditable, but 

 more definite work by them is needful, and will come in time. I am curious to learn what you 

 think of the Eldertons' attempt. I hope you are all well placed at Missenden. This is a very nice 

 and cheerful hotel. I have nothing to say that you would care to hear, having been in a sick 

 chamber so long, and dependent on a man-nurse — a very good and quiet man, by the way. 

 May invalidism long keep away from you and yours, is my hearty wish ! 



Ever affectionately yours, Francis Galton. 



Ickenham, Great Missenden, Bucks. April 6, 1909. 



My dear Francis Galton, I was very glad to get your note this morning and hear that you 

 had got into comfortable new quarters. I feel sure this springlike weather will do us all good. 

 I ran eight miles on my cycle to-day — a great achievement for me now-a-days — and I do not feel 

 the worse for it. Sedley Taylor of Trinity came in with a friend of ours to tea, and I had some 

 Eugenics talk with him. One point he told me — namely that they had a portrait of you at 

 Trinity — was news to me and good news. It is much that at Cambridge anything but Batesonism 

 should be recognised. I have been hoping to get on with the Albino paper, but much old work- 

 has stopped the way. I had first to finish the two Mendel papers for the R.S. and then to 

 write a rejoinder to the attack in the R.A. Society's Monthly Notices. Yesterday I got the 

 Eldertons' book and read it through last night. I think it on the whole very good. One has 

 got to remember that they have not 30 years of experience in lecturing behind them. Then: 

 are many things I should myself have illustrated more copiously with diagrams and models, and 

 I think the chapter on the probable error wants further illustration. This I have suggested to 

 them. But take it all in all I think they have done a difficult thing creditably — better than 

 I in the least anticipated. The right thing would have been in the old days one of Macmillan's 

 Science primers, but I don't know whether they still issue them or anything like them. You 

 will perhaps remember Clerk Maxwell's on "Matter and Motion" and Huxley's "Introductory 



