416   Life and Letters of Francis Galton

such as a very careful Insurance Office* might be expected to require. I was much questioned about the papers that Mr Allfancy had sent in, as regards my personal knowledge of the authorities for the facts there set forth. They then smilingly gave me a first-class P. G.-Passed in Genetics--degree, and I had to imprint my fingers in their Register, for future identification if necessary f. So I returned to my host with one small portion of a load of anxiety taken off my mind.

" I heard a little now, but must inform myself more particularly hereafter, as to the fate of those who failed to pass; A Bureau was charged with looking after the unclassed parents and their offspring, and much was done to make the lot of the unclassed as pleasant as might be, so long as they propagated no children. If they did do so kindness was changed into sharp severity.

" Labour Colonies are established where the very inferior are segregated under conditions that are not onerous, except that they must work hard and live in celibacy. It is difficult to describe the indignation and even the horror felt in Kantsaywhere, at acts that may spoil the goodness of their stock, of which they have become extremely proud and jealous. They look confidently forward to a coming time when Kantsaywhere shall have evolved a superior race of men. As it is the people who are born there and emigrate nearly always excel most of their competitors on equal terms, and return in after life with sufficient means to end their days in tranquillity near their beloved College.

"In the evening I found the Allfancy party much saddened by ill news to the effect that one of their dearest friends, who bad made a ' College' wedding with much eclat a few years previously, had given birth to a deformed child. I had expected to hear from Mrs Allfancy some severe remark on the subject, but was mistaken. She was most sympathetic with the family and the child. The College was responsible, she said, for its existence : the ma1riage of its parents had its highest approval ; it was brought into the world in accordance with the rules they advocate. The misfortune was due to some overlooked cause, which might or might not be of a kind that would hereafter be understood and could be provided against. No blame whatever attaches to the parents who should be whole-heartedly condoled with. The child should be in no way discouraged on account of its natural defect, except as regards absolute prohibition hereafter to marry."

Our hero now enters for the Honours Examination, and the description of the anthropometric tests and even the place of examination remind us at every turn of Galton's South Kensington Anthropometric Laboratory : see Vol. ii, pp. 257-262 and 370 et seq. The reader who has followed the course of Galton's labours in Vol. ii will recognise how in his Utopia he draws together all the threads of his apparently disconnected efforts to unite them into a strong eugenic strand. The following is Professor I. Donoghue's account of his experiences on March 25th

" This was the first of the four days to be occupied in the annual examination of about 80 candidates for Honours, one quarter of them on each day. The examination consists of four divisions. The first is mainly anthropometric, the second is aesthetic and literary, the third is medical, and the fourth is ancestral. Many examiners are employed and a staff of skilled clerks in addition. The examination is conducted in batches, each batch being assigned a particular hour for beginning, and for being thenceforward submitted to the four sets of Examiners successively.

`° My batch bad to present itself at 12 noon. At that hour I handed in my Pass Certificate to an official, who sat in the Hall, by the entrance to a long enclosure of lattice-work +, through which everything was easily seen from the outside. The enclosure contained a row of narrow

* See our pp. 243 ftn., 268 above and Chapter xvii. j' See our pp. 154 and 159 above.

+ The whole passage is a description of Galton's First South Kensington Laboratory; even the lattice-work-the beginning of which is seen in Plate L, p. 371, of our Vol. ii-was in use there.