472 EEroET— 1889, 



War Office we were informed that the military authorities did not think 

 it necessary to introduce such a competition, being completely satisfied 

 ■with the physique of the young men who came to them through our exami- 

 nations. At the same time we may state that should any department in 

 the public service be desirous of testing the physical qualifications of its 

 officers more severely than at present, we anticipate that there would be 

 no more difficulty in determining the relative capacities of the individual 

 candidates in this respect than is experienced in the literary examination. 

 Moreover, encouragement would be given generally to candidates to 

 maintain a good state of health while preparing for the literary examina- 

 tions, and any tendency to over-pressure would thei'eby be diminished.' 



It is not easy to imagine a topic more suitable for the notice of the 

 Anthropological Section than that which is suggested by these remarks. 

 Anthropologists peculiarly concern themselves with the practice of human 

 measurements, and with determining the most appropriate ways of dis- 

 cussing them. They occupy themselves with defining the bodily efficiency 

 of individuals and of races, and in devising tests that shall give warning 

 whenever growth and development are not proceeding normally. The 

 curious and hardly accountable disregard of bodily efficiency in those ex- 

 aminations through which youths are selected to fill posts in which excep- 

 tional bodily gifts happen to be peculiarly desirable, must strike the 

 attention of anthropologists with especial I'orce, and they of all persons 

 are best able to appreciate how much is sacrificed by its neglect. 



What has just been said has no reference whatever to the pass-exami- 

 nations now made by medical men in order to eliminate candidates who 

 are absolutely unfit. The necessity for such pass-examinations is obvious. 

 The reform now asked for is to give additional marks to those youths 

 who, being fit for service, are at the same time exceptionally well fit so 

 far as bodily efficiency is concerned. 



If the opinion of the military authorities quoted above be interpreted 

 to mean that literary examinations are indirect tests of bodily efficiency, 

 that view can be now shown to be erroneous. There has been a vast 

 amount of lax assertion in reference to this matter, some having said that 

 high intellect is often associated with a stunted and weakly frame, and 

 others having pointed to instances in which high mental and high physi- 

 cal powers were connected ; but it is only very recently that we have 

 secured a firm and sufficiently large basis of facts for trustworthy conclu- 

 sions. These are the various measures of Cambridge students made 

 during the last two or three years, and discussed by Dr. Venn, F.R.S., 

 in an excellent memoir recently published in the Journal of the Anthro- 

 pological Institute. The number of those who were measured is 1,905, 

 and they were divided into three classes — (1) high honour men, (2) low 

 honour men, and (3) poll men (that is to say, those who did not compete 

 for honours but took an ordinary pass degree). The result was that the 

 physical efficiency of the three classes proved to be almost exactly the 

 same, except that there appeared to be a slight deficiency in eyesight 

 among the high honour men. Otherwise they were alike throughout; 

 alike in their average bodily efficiency, and alike in the frequency with 

 which different degvees of bodily efficiency were distributed among them. 

 Therefore the fact that a man had succeeded in a literary examination 

 does not give the slightest clue to the character of his physical powers, 

 and an opinion that the present literary examinations are indirect tests of 

 bodily efliciency must be considered erroneous. 



