Sept. 24, 1885 | 
NATURE 
507 
Natural History memoir, made from new observations during 
the same journey. In addition the Committee have received 
from Mr. Guy Le Strange, and published, observations and 
notes made by him during a recent journey east of Jordan. The 
results of the survey, so far as it has been completed, will appear 
in a map reduced to a scale of about three miles to an inch, 
showing the country on both sides of the river Jordan, instead 
of on the western side only. This portion of the work is under 
the direction of Col. Sir Charles Wilson, K.C.M.G., F.R.S. 
The Society has also issued during the last year a popular 
account, by Prof. Hule, of his recent journey, called ‘*‘ Mount 
Seir,” and reprints of Capt. Conder’s popular books, ‘* Tent 
Work in Palestine” and ‘“‘Heth and Moab.” Finally, the 
Committee have completed the issue of their great work, the 
** Survey of Western Palestine,” with the last volumes of 
“* Jerusalem,” the ‘‘ Flora and Fauna,” and a portfolio of plates 
showing the excavations and their results. 
SECTION H 
ANTHROPOLOGY 
OPENING ADDRESS BY FRANCIS GALTON, F.R.S., ETC, 
PRESIDENT OF THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, 
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION 
THE object of the Anthropologist is plain. He seeks to learn 
what mankind really are in body and mind, how they came to be 
what they are, and whither their races are tending ; but the 
methods by which this definite inquiry has to be pursued are 
extremely diverse. Those of the geologist, the antiquarian, the 
jurist, the historian, the philologist, the traveller, the artist, and 
the statistician, are all employed, and the Science of Man pro- 
gresses through the help of specialists. Under these circum- 
stances, I think it best to follow an example occasionally set by 
presidents of sections, by giving alecture rather than an address, 
selecting for my subject one that has long been my favourite pur- 
suit, on which I have been working with fresh data during many 
recent months, and about which I have something new to 
say. 
My data were the Family Records entrusted to me by persons 
living in all parts of the country, and I am now glad to think 
that the publication of some first-fruits of their analysis will show 
to many careful and intelligent correspondents that their pains- 
taking has not been thrown away. I shall refer to only a part 
of the work already completed, which in due time will be pub- 
lished, and must be satisfied if, when I have finished this address, 
some few ideas that lie at the root of heredity shall have been 
clearly apprehended, and their wide bearings more or less dis- 
tinctly perceived. I am the more desirous of speaking on 
heredity, because, judging from private conversations and in- 
quiries that are often put to me, the popular views of what 
may be expected from inheritance seem neither clear nor 
Just. 
The subject of my remarks will be ‘‘ Types and their Inherit- 
ance.” JI shall discuss the conditions of the stability and in- 
stability of types, and hope in doing so to place beyond doubt 
the existence of a simple and far-reaching law that governs 
hereditary transmission, and to which I once before ventured 
to draw attention, on far more slender evidence than I now 
possess. 
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 7zo¢ 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 convergence 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 mediocrity 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 various 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 dowbtful, 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 an 1 
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 explan- 
ation of the phenomenon, so I thought it better to say no mor 
upen 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. [ 
tried in vain for a long and weary time to obtain it in sufficieut 
abundance, and my failure was a cogent motive, together wil!1 
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 } 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 respective parentages, 205 in number. 
In every case I transmuted the female statures to their corre- 
sponding 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 [ 
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‘0o9. 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 u-ed 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 depen- 
dence on differences of bringing up, and its inconsiderable in- 
fluence on the rate of mortality. Other advantages which are 
not equally obvious are no less great. One of these lies in the 
fact that stature is not a simple element, but a sum of the accu- 
mulated lengths or thicknesses of more than a hundred bodily 
parts, each so distinct from the rest as to have earned a name by 
which it can be specified. ‘The list of them includes about fifty 
separate bones, situated in the skull, the spine, the pelvis, the 
two legs, and the two ankles and feet. The bones in both the 
lower limbs are counted, because it is the average length of these 
two limbs that contributes to the general stature. The cartilages 
interposed between the bones, two at each joint, are rather more 
numerous than the bones themselves. The fleshy parts of the 
scalp of the head and of the soles of the feet conclude the list. 
Account should also be taken of the shape and set of many of 
the bones which conduce to a more or less arched instep, straight 
back, or high head. I noticed in the skeleton of O’Brien, the 
Trish giant, at the College of Surgeons, which is, I believe, the 
tallest skeleton in any museum, that his extraordinary. stature 
of about 7 feet 7 inches would have been a trifle increased if the 
faces of his dorsal vertebree had been more parallel and his back 
consequently straighter. : 
The beautiful regularity in the statures of a population, when- 
ever they are statistically marshalled in the order of their heights, 
