1 8 INFLUENCE OF PARENTAL ALCOHOLISM 



It is a noteworth}^ fact that Mr. Keynes quotes Edin- 

 burgh and Aberdeen comparative statistics as to weight 

 and height of children as against those of the selected 

 Edinburgh school, but that he oinits to refer to the Glasgow 

 data which show that in the vital matter of weight the 

 Edinburgh boys compared favourably vnth. the Glasgow 

 boys. But all such comparison is practically idle, as any 

 one with anthropometric experience knows. Every dif- 

 ferent social class, every different locality, has its own 

 height and weight standard, and the so-called Anthropo- 

 metrical Committee's standard has no comparative value 

 at all. If Mr. Keynes had taken the trouble to compare 

 the two schools described in the report as (i) Country 

 vSchool (Poor district) and (ii) Country School (Prosperous 

 district) he would have seen how Httle stress can be laid 

 on either prosperity or poverty as producing difference of 

 measurement of this kind when we pass from one class to 

 a second, or one locality to a second.^ They are in the 

 first place a matter of local race and of the selection 

 (combined with heredity) which differentiates social classes. 

 The schools he selects for comparison contain children of 

 different social classes from the ' selected school ', and their 

 superiority in weight and stature no more marks the 

 excessive degeneracy of the parents of the ' selected school ' 

 children than the difference between the Edinburgh and 

 Aberdeen data, for an examination of the Aberdeen 

 schedules at present in this Laboratory shows that they 

 included a school attended by many boys of the profes- 

 sional classes. Mr. Keynes's ideas of statistical treatment 

 are well illustrated by his comparison of the boys of the 



the adequacy of its editorial management. This view is confirmed by 

 Mr. Keynes's treatment of anthropometric data. 



^ The weights and heights of the boys in (ii) are on the whole less than 

 those in (i) ! 



