Etigenics as a Creed and the Last Decade of Galton's Life 431 



The Court, Grayshott, Haslemere. October 30, 1910. 



My dear Karl Pearson, Will the enclosed draft of a letter to the Times fulfil what you 

 think desirable 1 Pray make suggestions freely. I have heard from X. in a long " private " 

 letter replying to what I sent him. He writes nicely but impenitently*. He is about to give 

 numerous lectures. Very asthmatically, but affectionately yours, Francis Galton. 



X. is no longer even a member of the Eugenics Education Society. 



48, Grosvenor Street. November 8, 1910. 

 My dear Galton, I must write a line, as one of your oldest friends f, to congratulate you 

 on the great honour of the Copley Medal. 



I hope you have been keeping well. Yours very sincerely, Avebury. 



Grayshott House, Haslemere. November 13, 1910. 



This will henceforth be my address. 



My dear Karl Pearson, You must indeed have been " rushed " as you say. The Press 

 cuttings reached me of the letters of you and the antagonists, whom it seems to me you bowl 

 over easily. 



Thanks about the Royal Society. I shall not, could not, attend however much I wished it, 

 and had thought of asking you, if Sir George Darwin failed, to receive the medal on my behalf. 

 But he tvill, anyhow, be there. So I have asked him to do so. 



People die so fast that I can find only five other living Englishmen, with Copley after their 

 names, in the Royal Society list of Fellows ; they are — Sir Joseph Hooker, Lord Lister, Lord 

 Rayleigh, Sir William Crookes, Alfred R. Wallace. How age counts! 



Thank the Staff for me for their joint telegram of congratulations. There is no news here 

 that you would care for. What a political turmoil is at hand ! 



Ever affectionately yours, Francis Galton. 



Grayshott House, Haslemere. December 6, 1910. 



My dear Karl Pearson, Who is Mr Snow? You seem to have found a worker after your 

 own heart. I wish that you or he could throw more light on the paradox that cousins are no more 

 unlike than uncles and nephews. It would seem a reasonable deduction that cousins to the nth 

 degree are as much alike as first cousins. Then, again, statistics make out (unless I am quite 

 wrong) that husbands and wives are as much alike as first cousins. I wish you could clear my 

 puzzled mind. Also one wants to know more precisely about the compound effect of hereditary 

 influences. What is that of bi-parental — of the same kind — as compared with uni-parental 1 

 What is that of all four grand paren tal + bi-parental? and so forth. The whole lot together 

 cannot exceed 10 J. 



I congratulate you on the last number of Biometrika. 



How are you all ? Your Winchester son will soon be with you. All goes on quietly here, 

 but I am not allowed out of doors in such weather as we have recently had. In fact, I have 

 been imprisoned now for 1 4 days and begin to crave for open air. 



Sir Archibald Geikie comes not infrequently over the 5 hilly miles that separate his house 

 from mine, and tells me scientific news. 



If you care to rear a breed of dogs who eat woollen cloth, there is one in this house that does 

 so. He began by nibbling off and swallowing the lappet of my man-nurse's coat, who had been 

 caressing him, and subsequently found his way into the butler's pantry at night, and ran away 

 with a beautiful new pair of trousers of mine, dragged them to his kennel and gnawed out a pieoe 

 bigger than the palm of my hand and ate it. It has strained my Xmas feelings to pardon him ! 



* Galton's singular gentleness of disposition rarely allowed him to give expression to some 

 of his deeper feelings about the proceedings of certain of his rasher self-styled followers. One 

 incident, however, has been preserved: a letter came at mealtime; it went flying across the 

 dinner table with the exclamation, " My disciple indeed ! " 



t Lord Avebury was 76 years old, twelve years younger than Galton, but they had been 

 associated in many projects. 



J It seems to me now in the light of experimental determinations that it can, and that this is 

 the source of progressive evolution when small groups are isolated or there is intensive in-breeding. 



