INTRODUCTORY. LXXVII 



periods ; and, nextly, the rates of absence, from sickness, of men and officers. The 

 physiological part treats of age and the law of distribution of age, of stature, circumference 

 of chest, weight, and some minor physical characteristics. Each of these subjects is 

 illustrated by tables, in which the calculated result by the theory of probabilities is 

 placed in parallel columns with the actual observation. The number of men on whosf> 

 examination these tables were founded was 25,878. Fi;rther reference will be made 

 to this able production in connection with the application of the binomial theorem to 

 man -measurement. 



The most successful and distinguished laborer in this field of statistics is M. Lam- 

 bert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet, of Brussels. He was born in 1796, and devoted himself 

 in early life to the study of art, to which he gradually added a profound knowledge of 

 mathematics and the physical sciences. Appointed astronomer-royal, and, later, director 

 of the Royal Observatory of Brussels, and perpetual secretary of the Royal Academy 

 of Belgium, he became engaged in an extensive correspondence with men of science 

 in all parts of the world, and, making diligent use of these opportunities, he Avas 

 enabled to collect a vast body of statistics upon the subject of his especial study, 

 namely, anthropometry, or measurement of all the faculties of man.* At the meeting 

 of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, at Cambridge, in 1832, M. 

 Quetelet with others founded the statistical section of that society. Later he originated 

 the International Statistical Congress. 



In 1 846, M. Quetelet published a work on the application of the theory of proba- 

 bilities to moral and political science.'"' In this volume he exhibited the applicability 

 of the binomial theorem of Newton and Pascal in a manner so striking- for its oriffi- 

 nality and its results as to elicit warm commendations from many distinguished men, 

 and, among others, from Sir John F. W. Herschel, who contributed on the subject a 

 long and able article to the Edinburgh Review,^ in which he expressed his full coinci- 

 dence in the views of the Belgian philosopher. This introduction led the way to 

 examination of the subject in Great Britain, and, later, in the United States. A quarter 

 of a century has elapsed since the publication of this book, and during that period 

 Quetelet has seen his theory tested by the observations and experiments of scientific 

 men in all the civilized countries of the world. 



In 1871, he published the book he entitles " Anthropometry, or the measurement 

 of the ditferent faculties of man."* This elaborate work is the crowning trophy of M. 

 Quetelet's long scientific labors, and demonstrates the power of the calculus of proba- 

 bilities, upon certain data, to exhibit the mean of man's physical and intellectual facul- 

 ties. It is divided into five books, of which the first treats generally of the proportions 

 of the body, and the second contains a history of the efforts made from the earliest 

 time to the present to educe a satisfactory theory or canon of human proportion. The 

 third book treats of the mean results of measurements, and their relation to the laws 

 of growth ; the fourth, of these general mean results applied to races ; and the fifth, of 

 their application to intellectual qualities, to marriage, .crime, &c. 



'"St je hasarde ici le nom (J'AntiiropomiSirie, c'est uuiquemcnt pour hotter des longueurs el laripitltion trop frdqueiite 

 de la circonhcution Tlieorie dcs proportiovx dn corps humain." — AutUropom^tric, p. 78. 



' Siir la thduric des probabiUtes, appUquee mix sciences morales et poUtiques, 8vo, BruxoUes, 1846. 



* Ediiibitryli Herieir, No. clxxxv, July, 1850, vol. xcii, p. 1. 



■* Anthropomefric, ou mesurc des differentes faculUs de Vliomme, 8vo, Bnixclles, 1871. 



