262 ANTHROPOLOGY xvn 



that those taken by different observers should be comparable. 

 These requirements seem so simple and natural at first sight 

 that the majority of persons whom I am addressing will 

 wonder that I should allude to them. Only those who are 

 seriously occupied, or perhaps I should rather say, only those 

 who were seriously occupied a few years ago with the 

 endeavour to solve these problems can have any idea of their 

 difficulty. The amount of time and labour that has been 

 spent upon them is enormous, but the result has, I think, 

 been quite commensurate with it. 



We have attained at last to methods of measurement and 

 standards of comparison which, in the hands of persons of 

 ordinary intelligence, and with a moderate amount of training, 

 will give data which may be absolutely depended upon. From 

 these we hope to be able to formulate accurate information as 

 to the physical conformation of all the groups into which 

 mankind is divided, and so gradually to arrive at a natural 

 classification of those groups, and a knowledge of their 

 affinities one to another. 



But the exact methods of modern Anthropometry are not 

 only important on account of the aid they give in studying 

 the race characteristics of man. As has so often happened 

 when scientific observation has been primarily carried out for 

 its own sake, it ultimately leads to practical applications 

 undreamt of by its earlier cultivators. The application of 

 Anthropometry not to the comparison of races, but to elucidate 

 various social problems as the laws of growth, of heredity, of 

 comparative capacities of individuals within a community, and 

 the effects of different kinds of education and occupation, as 

 worked out first by Quetelet in Belgium, and subsequently by 

 Francis Galton, Eoberts, and others in this country, and its 

 still more concrete application as an aid in administering 

 justice by methods perfected by Bertillon in France, are strik- 

 ing illustrations of the practical utility of labours originally 

 undertaken under the influence of devotion to science pure 

 and simple. 



The importance of being able to determine the identity 

 of an individual under whatever circumstances of disguise he 

 may be presented for examination has, of course, long been 



