i6 FRANCIS GALTON 



extraordinary and culpable ignorance, I offered 

 to give lectures on the subject, gratuitously, at the 

 then newly-founded camp at Aldershot." 



He received no answer from the War OfBce, but 

 a personal appHcation to Lord Palmerston led to his 

 being installed. He speaks of a few officers attend- 

 ing his course, and adds that the "rude teachings 

 of the Crimean War soon superseded" his own. 



In relation to what I have been speaking of, I 

 must here be allowed to turn back to an earlier 

 period of his life. In illustrating the different dis- 

 positions of his sisters, both of whom were dear to 

 him, Galton writes : 



"My eldest sister was just, my youngest merci- 

 ful. When my bread was buttered for me as a 

 child, the former picked out the butter that filled 

 the big holes, the latter did not. Consequently 

 I respected the former, and loved the latter." 



Have we not here an early appreciation of 

 method, or must we merely class the memory with 

 the scene in "Great Expectations," where the 

 terrifying elder sister, Mrs. Joe, prepares bread 

 and butter for her husband and for Pip (her little 

 brother) in an eminently just and disagreeable 

 manner. May I be allowed to add that a love of 

 butter in the big holes is not hereditary in all 

 branches of the family ; I should have loved the 

 sister who picked it out. 



At a later stage in his boyhood Galton trans- 

 ferred his study of method from his sisters to his 

 schoolmasters. He describes what he suffered from 

 the absurd limitations (which still exist) in the 

 education of English boys, and chafed at the 



