444 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXX. No. 770 



Pearson's plan of proving or disproving tclegony 

 by a statistical study of the degrees of resem- 

 blance of children to fathers rests more on mathe- 

 matical ideas than on biological indications, to 

 judge from Thompson's account of it. 



I should not like to be responsible for any 

 biologist's account of my work, and it was per- 

 fectly open to Mr. Cook, as Thompson pre- 

 sumably cites the locus of my memoir {Royal 

 Society Proc, Vol. 60, p. 273, 1896), to 

 have consulted it, for he writes from Wash- 

 ington. However, he has not chosen to do so, 

 and prefers to suggest that I have not done 

 the very obvious thing to do, namely, com- 

 pare maternal and paternal resemblances in 

 the case of elder and younger children. I do 

 not know whether a man makes himself ridic- 

 ulous in the biological field when he criticizes 

 another for not doing exactly what he has 

 done, but I do know what we think of him in 

 the sphere of the exact sciences 1 



Karl Pearson 



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