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viz.]   DISCUSSION OF THE DATA OF STATURE.   119

hopeful case among my 18 schemes, but found the gain, if any, to be so small, that I did not care to go on with the experiment. It did not seem to deserve the additional trouble, and I was indisposed to do anything that was not really necessary, which might further confuse the reader. But had I possessed better data, I should have tried the Geometric Mean throughout. In doing so, every measure would be replaced by its logarithm, and these logarithms would be treated just as if they had been the observed values. The conclusions to which they might lead would then be re-transmuted to the numbers of which they were the logarithmic equivalents.

In short, we have dealt mathematically with an ideal population which has similar characteristics to those of a real population, and have seen how closely the behaviour of the ideal population corresponds in every stage to that of the real one. Therefore we have arrived at a closely approximate solution of the problem of statistical constancy, though numerous refinements have been neglected.


Natural Selection.-This hardly falls within the scope of our inquiry into Natural Inheritance, but it will be appropriate to consider briefly the way in which the action of Natural Selection may harmonise with that of pure heredity, and work together with it in such a manner as not to compromise the normal distribution of faculty. To do this, we must deal with the case that best represents the various possible