416 Life and Letters of Francis Gallon 



such as a very careful Insurance Office* might be expected to require. I was much questioned 

 about the papers that Mr Allfancy had sent in, as regards my personal knowledge of the 

 authorities for the facts there set forth. They then smilingly gave me a first-class P. G. — Passed 

 in Genetics — degree, and I had to imprint my fingers in their Register, for future identification 

 if necessary "f. So I returned to my host with one small portion of a load of anxiety taken off 

 my mind. 



" I heard a little now, but must inform myself more particularly hereafter, as to the fate 

 of those who failed to pass. A Bureau was charged with looking after the unclassed parents 

 and their offspring, and much was done to make the lot of the unclassed as pleasant as might 

 be, so long as they propagated no children. If they did do so kindness was changed into sharp 

 severity. 



" Labour Colonies are established where the very inferior are segregated under conditions 

 that are not onerous, except that they must work hard and live in celibacy. It is difficult to 

 / describe the indignation and even the horror felt in Kantsaywhere, at acts that may spoil the 

 \ goodness of their stock, of which they have become extremely proud and jealous. They look 

 confidently forward to a coming time when Kantsaywhere shall have evolved a superior race 

 of men. As it is the people who are born there and emigrate nearly always excel most of 

 their competitors on equal terms, and return in after life with sufficient means to end their 

 days in tranquillity near their beloved College. 



" In the evening I found the Allfancy party much saddened by ill news to the effect that 

 one of their dearest friends, who had made a ' College ' wedding with much 6clat a few years 

 previously, had given birth to a deformed child. I had expected to hear from Mrs Allfancy 

 some severe remark on the subject, but was mistaken. She was most sympathetic with the 

 family and the child. The College was responsible, she said, for its existence : the marriage of 

 its parents had its highest approval ; it was brought into the world in accordance with the 

 rules they advocate. The misfortune was due to some overlooked cause, which might or might 

 not be of a kind that would hereafter be understood and could be provided against. No blame 

 whatever attaches to the parents who should be whole-heartedly condoled with. The child 

 should be in no way discouraged on account of its natural defect, except as regards absolute 

 prohibition hereafter to marry." 



Our hero now enters for the Honours Examination, and the description 

 of the anthropometric tests and even the place of examination remind us at 

 every turn of Galton's South Kensington Anthropometric Laboratory : see 

 Vol. II, pp. 257-262 and 370 et seq. The reader who has followed the course 

 of Galton's labours in Vol. II will recognise how in his Utopia he draws 

 together all the threads of his apparently disconnected efforts to unite them 

 into a strong eugenic strand. The following is Professor I. Donoghue's 

 account of his experiences on March 25th : 



" This was the first of the four days to be occupied in the annual examination of about 

 80 candidates for Honours, one quarter of them on each day. The examination consists of four 

 divisions. The first is mainly anthropometric, the second is aesthetic and literary, the third 

 is medical, and the fourth is ancestral. Many examiners are employed and a staff of skilled 

 clerks in addition. The examination is conducted in batches, each batch being assigned a 

 particular hour for beginning, and for being thenceforward submitted to the four sets of 

 Examiners successively. 



" My batch had to present itself at 1 2 noon. At that hour I handed in my Pass Certificate 

 to an official, who sat in the Hall, by the entrance to a long enclosure of lattice- work %, through 

 which everything was easily seen from the outside. The enclosure contained a row of narrow 



* See our pp. 243 ftn., 268 above and Chapter xvn. 



f See our pp. 154 and 159 above. 



J The whole passage is a description of Galton's First South Kensington Laboratory ; even 

 the lattice-work — the beginning of which is seen in Plate L, p. 371, of our Vol. n — was in 

 use there. 



