ON THE PHYSIQUE AND ABILITY OF OFFSPRING 1 9 



' selected ' Edinburgh school with those of the ' Edinburgh 

 Public School ' and the ' Higher Grade vSchool '. It is not 

 only that the former represents totally different social 

 classes from the latter, but that the children of 14 in the 

 ' selected ' school are represented by 5 boys and 2 girls ! 

 Mr. Keynes has taken the averages on 2 to 5 children as 

 comparable with those on children who are said to stay to 

 school until 18 years. In other words, since the categories 

 of children aged 13 and 14 in a pubHc elementary school 

 are depleted of their oldest, physically and mentally fittest, 

 who go out into life, or get scholarships to secondary 

 schools ; those left are almost invariably the youngest 

 and feeblest. It is 7 of these which he has compared 

 against the full categories of children of 14 in secondary 

 schools ! The drop from 61 boys of 13 to 5 of 14, and 

 53 girls of 13 to 2 of 14 does not seem to have struck 

 Mr. Keynes, and he handles his averages based on 5 boys 

 and 2 girls as follows : 



The average weight of the children is below the normal 

 to a similar extent [What is the normal ? Nobody 

 knows it, and the Edinburgh values are greater than those 

 of many Glasgow and London schools], and the deficiency 

 becomes more marked as the children grow older. Boys 

 of 14 weighed on the average 21 lb. less than in the 

 Edinburgh PubUc School, 18 lb. less than in the Higher 

 Grade School ; girls of 14 weigh 23 lb. less than in the 

 Public Schoo], 25 lb. less than in the Higher Grade School. 

 These figures also the memoir omits and ignores. 



The memoir naturally omits them because they have 

 no bearing whatever on the point under discussion, 

 namely, the differential effect of parental alcohoUsm on 

 children of the same class and environment. Trained 

 anthropometrical statisticians would, however, under any 

 circumstances ignore results based on averages (!) of 



