Eugenics as a Creed and the Last Decade of 'Galton's Life 345

I hope the weather has so far mended with you as not to bring your holiday change earlier to an end, than was originally intended. It is pleasant enough here. I sat out yesterday in my bath chair in the park, for an hour or more.

I have secured a pretty little house in Brockham, just south of Box Hill, with the Mole River for its meadow boundary. It is called "The Meadows." We go there at the end of October. My own matters get on. The whole of the text of my book is in the printers' hands " for Press " and the index is in their hands too, but not yet in type. I shall be glad to have wholly done with it.

Eugenics gets on. I have drafted an Address for the October meeting of the new Society of which I enclose the prospectus (No, I don't. I can't find one!). The address takes up fresh ground and I must ask Crackanthorpe to smash it into shape as soon as it is type-written. I see that in the President of the Anthropological Section, Ridgeway's, address, there is a good deal of platitudinous appreciation of Eugenics towards its close.

What do you think of Frank Darwin's Address? I must read it carefully yet again, but at present it seems to me that he asks for too much tenacity of memory from each of innumerable units. The forgetfulness of one of them would create a havoc in the orderly development. But I write crudely. Ever affectionately, FRANCIS CALTON.

Your tale about Churton and the mad college porter is very amusing*.

42, RUTLAND GATE, S.W. Sept. 24, 1908.

MY DEAR KARL PEARSON, I returned yesterday to London and the new No. -of Biometrika arrived shortly after. I am glad that you have that off your hands. Your last letter, which describes your health as run low and the quantity of work ahead, made me feel sad, and fearful that the residue of your scanty holiday may have been far short of what your health needs. How I wish I could be of service to you in any way. It is a shame that your powers and zeal should be used up by comparatively small details of not the most advanced tuition t. I did not write before, being unwilling to add to your work. Now when you have time, a line would be very acceptable just to say how you are.

The U. pedigree is not even yet such as I could wish. The V. U.'s, on whom I relied, were out of town and when they returned just before I last left it, could not find the required notes. I will now try a different way.

I have let this house for the winter, beginning with Nov. 1, and have taken "The Meadows," Brockham, Dorking, for that same time. It is small but very well appointed, and is pretty. Moreover it stands high, notwithstanding its name and the fact that the river Mole bounds its adjacent meadow. Box Hill is just to its north and is said to shelter it.

I address this to Hampstead, thinking that you may have returned by now.

Ever affectionately, FRANCIS GALTON.

I am a little busy with the new Eugenics Education Society. Also I have just read the proof-sheets of Saleeby's forthcoming book on race improvement. It has some new things, but too much denunciation. However he rubs certain elementary truths strongly into the reader.

7, WELL ROAD, HAMPSTEAD, N.W. September 25, 1908.

MY DEAR FRANCIS GALTON, Many thanks for your sympathetic note. We came back last Saturday and I am trying to get back into harness again. I enclose the final form of the prospectus of the Treasury. I do not propose to issue it just yet, until we are a little farther forward with Part I, but we began drawing the plates for it to-day. I think we shall have a good first number. I have got a good Pollock Pedigree; SirEdward Fry answered very nicely and I hope to get fully the data from him. Mr Vernon Lusbington has not yet answered; I have

* Alas ! Galton's letter to me concerning Churton, the abnormally shy College dean of my undergraduate days at King's, Cambridge, and my reply citing the incident of the under-porter mistaking him for the devil have alike perished.

t At this time the biographer was giving 24 hours a week to teaching and demonstrating, apart from aiding research workers, supervising Galton's Eugenics Laboratory and much heavy editorial work.

PGUI

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