298 
NATURE 
[ Aug. 10, 1871 

influence which can be traced in the vestiges of religion, manners, 
architecture, language, and nomenclature over nearly all the 
regions of the East to which the name has been applied. 
Another name has been applied to the continental part of this 
region—Indo-China. This, too, expresses the fact that on this 
area the influences of India and of China have interpenetrated. 
But the influence of China has, except on the eastern coast, been 
entirely political, and has not, like India, affected manners, arts, 
and religion. 
The address concluded with a long and interesting account of 
the land trade which has been maintained for many centuries be- 
tween Western China and the Valley of the Iriwadi. 

SECTION F. 
ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS 
OPENING ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT, LorD NEAVES 
The greater part of this address deals with subjects beyond our 
scope ; we may, however, make the following extracts :— 
Economic science is sometimes spoken of as having a very 
modern date; but I think that this is an error. More or less 
the subject has entered into all the codes or systems of law that 
have been established from the earliest times. Alongside of 
political philosophy, which may be considered as peculiarly the 
science of government, great attention has always been bestowed 
upon matters which form an important part of political economy, 
or economic science—such as taxation, trade, commerce, wealth, 
and population. Those writers also who have presented us with 
ideal or imaginary states or Utopias are full of discussions and 
speculations of the same kind. The rival ‘‘ Republics” of 
Plato and Aristotle afford abundant illustrations of this statement. 
It is peculiarly interesting to see this fact brought out so vividly 
in the admirable introduction to the “ Republic” of Plato, pre- 
fixed to that treatise in Prof. Jowett’s translation of that great 
philosopher ; and if we had a similar translation and exposition 
of Aristotle’s kindred work, which I think we might have from 
the hand of one of our own vice-presidents, to whom we owe so 
excellent an exposition of the ‘‘ Ethics,” we should see in a re- 
markable manner how many of the most interesting questions of 
the present day were considered and dealt with by those wonder- 
ful men according to the varying lights and tendencies which 
characterised their several minds. It is true that in more recent 
times a great advance has been made in economic science, and 
the chief feature and excellency of that change is the tendency to 
leave things as much as possible to their natural operation, and 
to the inherent laws of nature and society. It is to the credit of 
Scotland that she has produced the two greatest leaders in this 
altered movement—David Hume and Adam Smith—who are 
still high authorities on the whole subject, and whose principles 
have been made the basis of our recent legislation. The subject 
of Statistics is added to the title of this section as an auxiliary to 
the main subject of Economie Science. 

| power. 
of a single life, and by the effort of a single mind, to give an 
impulse to science and discovery which they could not have 
received throngh long generations of average mediocrity. 
Whether this singular boon and blessing to mankind can be 
traced to any law is a natural but mysterious inquiry. Some 
persons have considered the production of exceptional genius as 
quite an insulated fact ; and Savage Landor declared that no 
great man had ever a great son, unless Philip and Alexander of 
Macedon constituted an exception. Mr. Galton, however, in 
his interesting work on ‘‘ Hereditary Genius,” has endeavoured 
to prove that genius runs in families, or, at least, that men of 
genius have generally sprung from a stock where great mental 
power is conspicuous ; and he adheres to the view commonly 
taken as to the importance of the maternal character and in- 
fluence in the formation of genius. I do not venture to give any 
opinion upon Mr. Galton’s theory, but his book contains an im- 
portant collection of facts bearing on the subject, and a great 
deal of very curious collateral speculation. Mr. Galton attributes 
great power in many ways to the principle of /eredity, as it 
seems now to be called. He does not indeed go so far as the 
Irish statist, who, as mentioned by Sydney Smith, announced 
asa fact that sterility was often hereditary ; but he states that 
comparative infertility is transmitted in families ; and adduces 
as a remarkable example, a fact not generally known, if it bea 
fact, that in the case that frequently happens of Peers marrying 
heiresses, the family is apt to die out very soon, the heiress 
being naturally, in the general case, an only child, and bequeath- 
ing to her descendants a tendency to produce small families, 
who do not afford the usual chance of a numerous supply of 
descendants. Whatever may be said of some of his other 
opinions, I hesitate to concur with Mr. Galton in his proposition 
that as itis easy ‘‘ to obtain by careful selection a breed of dogs 
or horses, gifted with peculiar powers of running, or of doing 
anything else, so it would be quite practicable to produce a 
highly-gifted race of men by judicious marriages during several 
consecutive generations.” I doubt greatly the practicability of 
such a plan; and suspect there are some elements in human 
nature that would counteract it. Persons of proud family 
descent have often a horror of mesalliances; but I scarcely 
think it would be possible to inspire people of genius with the 
| same esprit de corps or desire to wed with those on a par with 
them. Men of genius don’t seem to me apt to fall in love with 
women as clever as themselves, and I rather suspect the tendency 
is to look for some difference of character, an instinct of which 
it is the object, or at least the result, to keep up the average of 
talent rather than to multiply the highest forms of mental 
At any rate we may here ask poor Polly’s question, 
| **Can love be controlled by advice?” and however we may in 
The subjects to which statistics may be extended seem to be | 
innumerable, and new ones are cropping up every day. In the 
pages of NATURE there lately appeared a letter of a somewhat 
curious kind, which may perhaps engage the attention of our 
fellow-associate member Mr. Tyler. The suggestion in that letter 
was that the degree of civilisation existing in any country is con- 
nected with the quantity of soap there consumed. The writer 
gave as a formula the equation of 
r= 
wlan 
x being the amount of civilisation inquired for, S being the soap 
consumed, and P the population consuming it. So that the 
amount of civilisation depended on the proportion of S, the 
numerator, to P, the denominator. If S is large in proportion 
to P, then the civilisation is great, and aice versd. How the 
civilisation of Scotland in the olden times would come out accord- 
ing to this test I shall not inquire ; but if there is any truth in 
the proposition, it gives additional relevancy and interest to the 
question which is sometimes vulgarly put by some people to their 
friends as to how they are provided with that commodity. I 
have not yet seen any tables framed upon this principle, 
but I have no doubt that the Registrar-General will keep 
it in view. An inquiry of a more serious nature, and 
indeed peculiarly important and impressive, is connected with 
one of the most remarkable phenomena in human nature—I 
mean the occasional appearance in the world of men of great 
genius. From time to time men have arisen whose mental 
powers haye far transcended the ordinary average of human 
intellect, and who have thereby been enabled, within the space 
other respects agree with Horace’s maxim, ‘‘ Fortes creantur 
fortibus et bonis,” I question whether a high mental stature 
could be maintained by coupling male and female genius 
together, or whether the experiment might not fail as signally 
as it is said sometimes to have done with Frederick William’s 
attempts to breed Grenadiers. I strenuously advise, however, 
that a marriage with a fool of either sex should be always con- 
sidered as a mesalliance, and I would particularly warn the 
ladies against such a step, taken, sometimes it is said, in the 
hope that their sway may in that way be more easily maintained. 
A fool is as difficult to be governed as a mule, and the couplet, 
I believe, is strictly true, that says— 
Wise men alone, who long for quiet lives, 
Wise men alone are governed by their wives. 


SCIENTIFIC INTELLIGENCE FROM 
AMERICA* 
HE geological expedition under Prof. Hayden, at last ad- 
vices, had reached Fort Hall, in Utah, on June 21, after a 
march from Ogden, during which much of interest was obtained 
by the party. The heat was very great, reaching from 95° to 
105° in the shade during the day, with a difference of 25° to 35° 
between the wet and dry bulb thermometers. The party ex- 
pected to pass Fort Ellis by the middle of July, on its way to the 
basin of the Yellow Stone Lake, where it will probably spend 
the greater part of the season. Mr. Thomas Moran, of Philadel- 
phia, and Mr. Bierstadt, were to join the expedition before long 
for the purpose of making sketches for paintings.—In the August 
number of the American Fournal of Science, will be found a con- 
* Contributed by the Editor of Harfer’s Weekly, 
