414 Miss C. D. Fawcett and Prof. Karl Pearson. 



measurements on North American Indians. With extreme kindness 

 Dr. Boas* at once forwarded to England upwards of 1000 sheets of 

 measurements on comparable Indian tribes. These tribes, however, 

 contain extremely mixed blood. In the fewest cases were pure 

 Indian ancestors noted ; one of the grandparents at least exhibited as 

 a rule European blood — English, Dutch, French, Irish, &c. Dr. Boas 

 himself writes : — 



" I could not give you any series that was sufficiently extensive 

 and embraced pure Indians only, because among these tribes the 

 determination of relationships offers peculiar difficulties. I am afraid 

 that your results may also bring out the looseness of family 

 relations. I should not be surprised if the relation between father 

 and child were much lower than that between mother and child, 

 because often another person is actually the father of the child." 



Dr. Boas's last surmise is amply verified ; it will be found from the 

 table below that the coefficient of heredity between father and son is 

 abnormally small, while that between father and daughter is actually 

 less than the probable error of this series of measurements ! If we 

 put upon one side any purely hypothetical supposition that illegiti- 

 mate births are more likely to be female than male, there would 

 seem reason to suppose some native custom by which it is held less 

 discreditable to pass off a daughter than a son upon the titular 

 husband. It may be asked whether, if the racial mixture is so great 

 and the paternity so obscure, it was worth while to undertake the 

 lengthy arithmeticf required to determine the hereditary correla- 

 tions. The answer is threefold : (a) if Galton's law of ancestral 

 heredity be correct, inheritance is not a racial character but a general 

 law of living forms, and racial mixtures will not influence the result ; 



(b) the results show that obscure paternity does not prevent good 

 values being found for other relationships ; in fact, the fulfilment of 

 Dr. Boas's surmise is in itself not without value, as showing how 

 well our algebraic theory fits itself to the facts ; it might almost be 

 said to provide a scientific measure of the conjugal fidelity of a race ; 



(c) it is always worth while to undertake an investigation on the 

 best material available, even if it be poor material for this pur- 

 pose, for it emphasizes the need of new and more elaborate obser- 

 vations. 



(3) It will be seen from the table that it has only been possible to 

 determine the coefficient of heredity for small series, varying from 

 80 to 143 pairs of the seven relationships, four corresponding to the 

 first degree of direct kinship and three to the first degree of collateral 



# It is difficult to sufficiently emphasize the disinterested service to science of 

 men who do not " monopolise " their anthropometric measurements. 



f We have to thank Mr. Leslie Bramley Moore for much aid in extracting the 

 head measurements from the slips and calculating cephalic indices. 



