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OCR Rendition - approximate
Eugenics as a Creed and the Last Decade of Galton's Life 275 of differences in parental qualities* and (ii) a thorough study of characters in Eurasians in order to test the applicability of the Mendelian hypothesis to man. V. A Bibliography of papers bearing on Eugenic topics is desirable. Many papers already exist, published in scientific transactions and journals, which bear on the Eugenists' problems; such a bibliography should include papers of breeders and horticulturists. Considering the enormous development nowadays of Genetics it would probably be well to treat separately Genetics and Eugenics. VI. Co-operation between students of Eugenics. Probably Galton had in mind here special journals, societies, and congresses. VII. Certificates of Eugenic fitness. To these we shall return later. It will be seen that Galton's programme did not lack comprehensiveness. Another event of this year was the invitation to Galton to accept the Presidency of the British Association at the York Meeting in 1906. It is desirable to indicate that it was not from want of asking-and even of gentle pressure-that the Association missed the honour of numbering Francis Galton among its past presidents. In this he stands with his cousin Charles Darwin; the names of two of the most original scientists of the Victorian epoch fail to appear on the presidential roll. The following letters received by Galton on May 8 and answered on May 9 explain the situation. BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. May 5, 1905. DEAR MR GALTON, At the meeting of the Council of the British Association held at Burlington House this afternoon, it was unanimously resolved that you be nominated as President of the British Association for the meeting to be held at York in 1906. The proposal was received by the Council most cordially, and the officers were instructed to communicate with you and ascertain whether you will agree to the nomination. * I do not know on what Galton's suspicion rested of a marked influence on the characteristic (c) of a child, if there was a great difference (6) between the paternal (f) and maternal (m) characteristics. Theoretically, if a be the coefficient of assortative mating, r of parental heredity supposed the same for both parents, Q a standard deviation, and ra, the correlation of 8 and c, then: ~f - ane ray=r / .J(vI-T )2+2vfv,,, (1-e). Since the coefficients of variation are nearly the same in man and woman, we have, if M, and M2 are mean values in father and mother, r r/~1+2M1 ,(1-e) ac - (MI _ ,412)2 In the case of absolute measurements in man and woman, M, _ (1 +-,l,) M, and e = •2 roughly. Accordingly ra, = r x •069 = •03, approximately. Hence, statistically, there is no significant influence of the difference of parental characters on the character of the child. Physiologically, of course, there may be some influence of extreme differences, but such being rare it may not be detectable in the statistical treatment. 35-2
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