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TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 1207 
It is some years since I made an extensive series of experiments on the produce 
of seeds of different size but of the same species. They yielded results that 
seemed very noteworthy, and I used them as the basis of a lecture before the 
Royal Institution on February 9, 1877. It appeared from these experiments that 
the offspring did not tend to resemble their parent seeds in size, but to be always 
more mediocre than they—to be smaller than the parents, if the parents were large ; 
to be larger than the parents, if the parents were very small. The point of conver- 
gence was considerably below the average size of the seeds contained in the large 
bagful I bought at a nursery-garden, out of which I selected those that were 
sown. 
The experiments showed further that the mean filial regression towards medio- 
erity was directly proportional to the parental deviation from it. This curious 
result was based on so many plantings, conducted for me by friends living in 
yarious parts of the country, from Nairn in the north to Cornwall in the south, 
during one, two, or even three generations of the plants, that I could entertain no 
doubt of the truth of my conclusions. ‘The exact ratio of regression remained a 
little doubtful, owing to variable influences ; therefore I did not attempt to define 
it. After the lecture had been published, it occurred to me that the grounds of 
my misgivings might be urged as objections to the general conclusions. I did not 
think them of moment, but as the inquiry had been surrounded with many small 
difficulties and matters of detail, it would be scarcely. possible to give a brief and 
yet a full and adequate answer to such objections. Also, I was then blind to what 
. I now perceive to be the simple explanation of the phenomenon, so I thought it 
better to say no more upon the subject until I should obtain independent evidence. 
It was anthropological evidence that I desired, caring only for the seeds as means 
of throwing light on heredity in man. I tried in vain for a long and weary time 
to obtain it in sufficient abundance, and my failure was a cogent motive, together 
with others, in inducing me to make an offer of prizes for family records, which 
was largely responded to, and furnished me last year with what I wanted. I 
especially guarded myself against making any allusion to this particular inquiry 
in my prospectus, lest a bias should be given to the returns. I now can securely 
contemplate the possibility of the records of height having been frequently drawn 
up in a careless fashion, because no amount of unbiassed inaccuracy can account for 
the results, contrasted in their values but concurrent in their significance, that are 
derived from comparisons between different groups of the returns. 
An analysis of the records fully confirms and goes far beyond the conclusions 
I obtained from the seeds. . It gives the numerical value of the regression towards 
mediocrity as from 1 to 3 with unexpected coherence and precision, and it supplies 
me with the class of facts I wanted to investigate—the degrees of family likeness in 
different degrees of kinship, and the steps through which special family peculiarities 
become merged into the typical characteristics of the race at large. 
The subject of the inquiry on which I am about to speak was Hereditary 
Stature. My data consisted of the heights of 930 adult children and of their respec- 
tive parentages, 205 in number. In every case I transmuted the female statures 
to their corresponding male equivalents and. used them in their transmuted form, 
so that no objection grounded on the sexual difference of stature need be raised 
when I speak of averages. The factor I used was 1:08, which is equivalent to 
adding a little less than one-twelfth to each female height. It differs a very little 
from the factors employed by other anthropologists, who, moreover, differ a trifle 
between themselves; anyhow it suits my data better than 1:07 or 1:09. The final 
result is not of a kind to be affected by these minute details, for it happened 
that,owing to a mistaken direction, the computer to whom I first entrusted the 
figures used a somewhat different factor, yet the result came out closely the 
same. 
I shall explain with fulness why I chose stature for the subject of inquiry, 
because the peculiarities and points to be attended to in the investigation will 
manifest themselves best by doing so. Many of its advantages are obvious enough, 
such as the ease and frequency with which its measurement is made, its practical 
constancy during thirty-five years of middle life, its small dependence on differ- 
