RELATIVE STRENGTH OF NURTURE AND NATURE 35 



on elsewhere are followed up into their homes, and the state of these is 

 recorded, as in the Edinburgh investigation. 



Further, the Edinburgh material was of special value, because 

 there is not the same extraordinary mixture of racial types in that 

 city which is to be found in Glasgow or London. We are told, for 

 example, that Russian Jews have in London a very high percentage 

 of eye defect. Any one who has studied the copious statistics of 

 Randal must be convinced that the degree and extent of myopia is 

 markedly a racial character ^ Those who have investigated any local 

 group in this country know that in anthropometric characters it is 

 usually significantly differentiated from any other local group. The 

 population of our suburbs is usually more sedentary than the 

 population in the working class districts of the town itself and 

 less mixed. 



I know, as a matter of fact, that the cephalic index of school 

 children varies very sensibly from one district of London to a second. 

 On this ground alone it is not possible, without control measurements, 

 to assert that, because the percentage of eye defect varies from 

 Whitechapel to Hampstead, the result is due to home environment. 

 It may be so, but a mere statement of percentages in different 

 districts without {a) age distributions, {b) racial proportions, and 

 {c) percentages of defective parents in each district, will not convince 

 those who desire logical statistical proof before forming any conclusion. 

 It is well known that the defective parents also gravitate to the worst 

 districts, and we may expect the defective children there also. For 

 these reasons the work at Edinburgh was especially valuable. It 

 gave age distribution, it dealt with a racially fairly homogeneous 

 material, and it followed up the children into their homes and told us 

 something, if not all we might desire to know, about their parents. 

 I see no other way in which a real solution could be obtained for 

 London. An individual school or two must have all — not only the 

 defective — children examined, and the eyesight report must be accom- 

 panied by a sociological report. 



A report such as that of Dr A. Hugh Thompson on the London 

 school children, in which the numbers at each age of both the normal 

 and the defective children are not given, cannot help the statistician 

 in the least to arrive at definite results. Nor, unless the children are 

 followed into their own homes, is it even possible to say how far bad 



^ The Jews, like the Germans, are largely bracliycephalic, and the increas- 

 ing brachycephaly of the town populations is a point not without suggestiveness 

 for changes in eyesight. 



