224 



NA TURE 



{jfan. 8, 1 1 



ANTHROPOMETRIC PER-CENTILES 

 Values surpassed, and Values unreached, by various percentages of the persons measured at the Anthropometric Laboratory in the 



late International Health Exhibition 



(The value that i< unreached by n per cent, of any large group of measurements, and surpass d by IOO-;/ of th in, is called Us «th 



percentile) 



per-centiles arranged in order of their magnitude are as 

 follows : — Pull, 4 ; Squeeze, 7 ; Breathing capacity, 10 ; 

 Height, 14 ; Weight, 26 ; Swiftness of blow, 26 ; Keenness 

 of sight, 37. We conclude from them that the female 

 differs from the male more conspicuously in strength than 

 in any other particular, and therefore that the commonly 

 used epithet of " the weaker sex," is peculiarly appro- 

 priate. 



The Table was constructed as follows: — I had groups 

 of appropriate cases extracted for me from the duplicate 

 records by Mr. J. Henry Young, of the General Register 

 Office. I did not care to exhaust the records, but re- 

 quested him to take as many as seemed in each case to 

 be sufficient to give a trustworthy result for these and 

 other purposes to which I desired to apply them. The 

 precise number was determined by accidental matters 

 of detail that in no way implied a selection of the measure- 

 ments. The summarised form in which I finally took 

 them in hand, is shown in the two upper lines of the 

 following specimen : — 



Height, Sitting, of Female Adults, Aged 23-50, in inches 



The meaning of the two upper lines is that in a total of 

 775 observations there were 2 cases measuring 29 and 

 under 30 inches, 8 cases measuring 30 and under 31 

 inches, and so on. The third line contains the sums of 

 the entries in the second line reckoned from the beginning, 

 and is to be read as follows : — 2 cases under 30 inches, 10 

 cases (=2 + 8) under 31 inches, 62 cases (= 2 + 8 -f- 52) 

 under 32 inches, and so on. 



I plotted these 775 cases on French " sectional " paper, 

 which is procurable in long and inexpensive rolls, ruled 

 crossways by lines 1 millimetre apart. I counted the first 

 line as 0° and the 776th as 775 D . Supposing the measure- 

 ments to have been plotted in the order of their magni- 

 tude, in succession between these lines, the first would 

 stand between o° and i°, the second between r and 2°, 

 and so on. Now we see from the Table that the second 

 measurement was just short of 30 inches, consequently 

 the third measurement was presumably just beyond it, 

 therefore the abscissa whose value is 2°, and which 

 separates the second from the third measurement, may 

 fairly be taken to represent the abscissa of the ordinate 

 that is equal to 30 inches exactly. Similarly, the abscissa 

 whose value is io' divides the measurement that is just 

 under 31 inches from that which is presumably just above 

 it, and may be taken as the abscissa to that ordinate 

 whose precise value is 31 , and so on for the rest. The 

 fourth line of the Table gives the ordinates thus deter- 

 mined for the abscissae whose values are entered above 

 them in the third line. I dotted the values of these 

 ordinates in their right places on the sectional paper, 

 and joined the dots with a line, which in every case, 

 except the breathing capacity, fell into a strikingly 

 regular curve. (I cannot account for this one partial 

 exception, save on the supposition of the somewhat irre- 



