HEREDITY 291
The rejoinder that might be made to his remark about hard work, is that character, including the aptitude for work, is heritable like every other faculty.
I had been overworked, and unable to give as close attention as desirable while correcting the proofs, so mistakes were to be feared. Happily there were not many, but one was absurd, and I was justly punished. It was due to some extraordinary commingling of notes on the families of Jane Austen and of Austin the jurist. In my normal state of health the mistake could not have been overlooked, but there it was. I was at that time a member of the Committee of the Athenaeum Club, among whose members there happened to be a representative of each of the above families, who gave it me hot," though most decorously.
I had much pleasant correspondence at a later date with Alphonse de Candolle, son of the still greater botanist of that name. He had written a very interesting book, PYistoire des Sciences et des Savants depuis deux Silcles, in which he analysed the conditions that caused nations, and especially the Swiss, to be more prolific in works of science at one time than another, and I thought that a somewhat similar investigation might be made with advantage into the history of English men of science.
It was a daring undertaking, to ask as I did, in 1874, every Fellow of the Royal Society who had filled some important post, to answer a multitude of Questions needful for my purpose, a few of which touched on religion and other delicate matters. Of course they were sent on the distinct understanding that the answers would ' be used for statistical pur-
