436   Life and Letters of France's Galton

earnestly, but with a saving sense of humour ; he would have been of earth's elect even if he had never achieved high rank in science. It was the loss of that ever-flowing spring of understanding human sympathy that we felt most bitterly. His teaching days were already over, and his clearly stated creed would remain with us, if he himself had passed away ; but the gracious friendship and the long-continued series of affectionate letters were for ever broken. There was no one left who would have the same keen and enlightened interest in all forms of biometric work, nor indeed anyone to whom a Report on the work of Galton's own Laboratory would be in future of capital importance.

From many talks with Francis Galton about the future of his Laboratory, I knew he desired the whole time and energy of a relatively young and strong man of science to carry it successfully through its infancy. It did not occur to me to think of myself as the first director of the Laboratory to be created by his testament, for I should have been. wholly unwilling to give up the superintendence of the Biometric Laboratory I had founded and confine my work to Eugenics research. It was because in 1909 after much discussion we could not hit upon the really suitable man for the first Galton Professor, that Francis Galton added the codicil to his will allowing the University to delay for a few years the appointment to the chair. I only learnt after his death the clause relating to myself which, after showing the codicil to me, he had added to it, granting me the liberty, if the University were willing to elect me to the professorship, of continuing my Bionmetric Laboratory. He had realised I should not desert it, even to be freed from elementary teaching. This was for me a last token of affection, and the creation of an obligation which I have sought in the past nineteen years to repay to the extent of my powers. May this- book in part bear witness thereof.

Fortunatus ego, cui in vestigiis ejus, tametsi graviter claudicans, spatiari conceditur !