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388   Life and Letters of Francis Galton

ciation between physique and intellect, and we cannot therefore argue from examinational success to any physical fitness. The high honours men, the low honours men and the poll men were alike in their average bodily efficiency, except for slightly worse vision in the high class honours men.

"The intellectual differences are usually small between the candidates who are placed, according to the present literary examinations, near to the dividing line between success and failure. But their physical differences are as great as among an equal number of other candidates taken at random. It seems then to be most reasonable whenever two candidates are almost on a par intellectually, though one is far superior physically, that the latter should be preferred. This is practically all I propose. I advocate no more at present than the introduction of new marks on a very moderate scale sufficient to save from failure a few very vigorous candidates for the Army, Navy, Indian Civil Service, and certain other Government appointments in which high bodily powers are of service. I would give the places to them that would be occupied under the present system by men who are far their inferiors physically, and very little their superiors intellectually. I am sure that every successful employer of men would assign as much weight as this to bodily efficiency, even among the highest class of those whom he employs, and that Government appointments would be still better adjudged than they now are if considerations of high bodily efficiency were taken into some account." (p. 25; B. A. B. p. 473.)

Galton considers that the desirable tests should involve measures of strength, vital capacity, agility or promptness, keenness of eyesight and of hearing. We could now add a number of tests, such as have been applied recently to candidates for the Air Force. The chapter concludes with the remark

"It would certainly be grateful to many parents who now lament the exclusively bookish character of the examinations, and are wont to protest against a system that gives no better chance to their own vigorous children of entering professions where bodily vigour is of high importance than if they had been physically just not unfit to receive an appointment." (p. 26; B. A. R. p. 473.)

Chapter I V is entitled : " On the Principle and Methods of Assigning Marks for Bodily Efficiency"." Galton starts by saying that we may either' give marks for ranks or for achievements, and apparently proposes in each


permission to have copies taken of some of the schedules and worked out the actual correlations for over 1000 cases with the following results:

Length of Head and Intelligence   + •111 ± •020,

Breadtl.of Head and Intelligence + •097 ± •021.

Schoolboys and schoolgirls at age twelve gave similar results. (See "Relationship of. Intelligence to Shape and Size of Head," Biometrika, Vol. v, p. 120.) Thus Galton was formally correct in saying there was association, but the correlation is so low as to be absolutely idle for any individual prognosis.

Galton's interest in the Cambridge Anthropometric Laboratory was very great and in association with Mr (now Sir) Horace Darwin not only new anthropometric instruments were devised, but the old ones improved or modified. The Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company produced "A Descriptive List of Anthropometric Apparatus, consisting of Instruments for Measuring and Testing the Chief Physical Characteristics of the Human Body. Designed under the Direction of Mr Francis Galton." Of this, the fourth issue (May, 1890) lies before me; it is rather a reasoned account of the meaning of an anthropometric laboratory, of the measurements which may be taken and of the methods of taking them, than the price list of a manufacturing firm.

" This was also contributed as a memoir to the British Association, see Report, 1889, pp. 474-8. The diagrams of the pamphlet fail in this B.A. memoir. They were, however, given in a paper in Nature, October 31, 1889, Vol. xr., pp. 650-51. On the other hand the B.A. Report has the paper by A. A. Somerville discussing Eton experiments on the relative reliability of physical tests and of literary examinations. A system of marking having been devised for physical tests and for medical fitness in certain directions two medical men examined independently 32