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Transition Studies   5

straint of my old superstition as if it had been a nightmare, and was the first to give me freedom of thought." (See Galton's letter to Darwin, Plate II of Vol. I.)

In the rapid growth of our knowledge of the wonderful process of human development, extending now over nearly a quarter of a million years, and with our present certainty that man has us/d fire for a great portion of that period, the suggestion that the discovery of how to make fire was a product of those last few thousand years which biblical folk-lore endeavours to cover, may well raise a smile. But does the modern reader realise when he smiles at and criticises the mid-Victorians that it was they-Darwin, Galton, Huxley, Clifford and others-who worked their way from such ignorance to insight and gave him the power to smile at it'?

To turn to a lighter matter before we leave the Art of Travel for good, we may find, even in such a work cram full of detail and technique, sure traces of Galton's sense of humour. Thus, having remarked that asses to kick must put their head to the ground and to bray must raise their tail, and described how the head can be kept up and the tail kept down, he remarks

"In hostile neighbourhoods, where silence and concealment are sought, it might be well to adopt this rather absurd treatment [lashing the tail to a heavy stone]. An ass who was being schooled according to the method of this and the preceding paragraph, both at the same time, would be worthy of an artist's sketch." (4th Edn. p. 61.)

Again, talking of Duck-Shooting, Galton remarks:

"It is convenient to sink a large barrel into the flat marsh or mud, as a dry place to stand or sit in, when waiting for the birds to come. A lady suggests to me, that if the sportsman took a bottle of hot water to put under his feet, it would be a great comfort to him, and in this I quite agree; I would take a keg of hot water, when about it." (Ibid. p. 253.)

Talking about Natives' Wives as members of a party, Galton commends them as giving great life to a party and as being invaluable in picking up gossip, which will give clues of importance, otherwise often missed. He considers in a special paragraph the Strength of Women, which he finds adequate for the march, and adds

"It is the nature of women to be fond of carrying weights; you may see them in omnibusses (!) and carriages, always preferring to hold their baskets or their babies on their knees, to setting them down on the seats by their sides. A woman, whose modern dress includes, I

know not how many cubic feet of space, has hardly ever pockets of a sufficient size to carry small articles, for she prefers to load her hands with a bag or other weighty object." (Ibid& p. 8.)


Lastly while Galton admitted that men without independent means could turn travel to excellent account as in opening up new countries, finding natural history specimens or hunting for ivory, there is no doubt that- he

1 Nay, does he realise how widespread is still the ignorance of human history in the apparently 'educated' classesl During the few months that the cases containing objects bearing on man's development have been on view in the little museum of the Galton Laboratory we have received more than one remonstrance against the dating of a neolithic skeleton at 8000 years and of palaeolithic man at over 50,000 years, as incompatible with the `well-known date' of the creation of the world 1