48   NATURAL INHERITANCE.   [CRAP,

several into the list of failures and distributed the rest, with the result that the number of cases in the successive classes, amounting now to the full total of 1,000, became 28, 80, 616, 151, and 125. This differs, I should say, a little from the inferences of the author, but the matter is here of small importance, so I need not go further into details.

If a Scheme is drawn from these figures, in the way described in page 39, it will be found to have the characteristic shape of our familiar curve of Distribution. If we wished to convey the utmost information that.this Scheme is capable of giving, we might record in much detail the career of two or three of the men who are clustered about each of a few selected Grades, such as those that are used in Table II., or fewer of them. I adopted this method when estimating the variability of the Visualising Power (Inquiries ii to Human Faculty). My data were very lax, but this method of treatment got all the good out of them that they possessed. In the present case, it appears that towards the foremost of the successful men within fifteen years of taking their degrees, stood the three Professors of Anatomy at Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh ; that towards the bottom of the failures, lay two men who committed suicide under circumstances of great disgrace, and lowest of all Palmer, the Rugeley murderer, who was hanged.

We are able to compare any two such Schemes as the above, with numerical precision. The want of exactness in the data from which they are drawn, will of course cling to the result, but no new error will be introduced