PREFACE xli
ness in a kinsman of an F.R.S. (or of other noteworthy person) is greater in the following proportion than in one who has no such kinsman : I f he be a father, 24 times as great ; if a brother, 31 times ; if a grandfather, 12 times ; if an uncle, 14 times ; if a male first cousin, 7 times ; if a greatgreat-grandfather on the paternal line, 3-21 times.
The reader may work out results for himself on other hypotheses as to the percentage of noteworthiness among the generality. A considerably larger proportion would be noteworthy in the higher classes of society, but a far smaller one in the lower ; it is to the bulk, say, to three-quarters of them, that the i per cent. estimate applies, the extreme variations from it tending to balance one
another.
The figures on which the above calculations depend may each or all of them be changed to any reasonable amount, without shaking the truth of the great fact upon which Eugenics is based, that able fathers produce able children in a much larger proportion than the generality.
The parents of the 207 Fellows of the Royal Society occupy a wide variety of social positions. A list is given in the Appendix of the more or less noteworthy parents of those Fellows whose names occur in the list of sixty-six families. The parents are classified according to their pursuits.
F
