Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/313

Rh heredity and its application to eugenics, beginning before the publication of the volume on "Hereditary Genius" in 1869 and continuing to the present time, is of vast importance. Numerous articles on these subjects by Galton himself and by others who have received their inspiration from him have been published in this journal, and it is of course out of the question to give a summary in a brief note. There are no other problems so important as those to which Galton has given the name eugenics, and there is no one else who has done so much toward making straight the way for their solution.

Sir Francis Galton's unnumbered services to science has been the establishment of a laboratory for the study of national eugenics at the University of London. In cooperation with the biometric laboratory and the department of applied mathematics, also under the direction of Professor Karl Pearson, it is leading the way in a movement likely to become dominant in the course of the present century. National eugenics is officially described as "the study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, either physically or mentally." It is further stated that it is intended that the laboratory shall serve as a storehouse of statistical material bearing on the mental and physical conditions in man, and the relation of these conditions to inheritance and environment, as a center for* the publication or other lorm of distribution of information concerning national eugenics, and as a school for training and assisting students in special problems in eugenics.

The general scope of the work which has been undertaken may be gathered from an enumeration of the publications for which the laboratories of the University of London are responsible. Biometrica is a journal for the statistical study of the biological sciences published about four times a year.and now in the seventh volume. It is a storehouse of materials and methods, dominated naturally by the interests of the editor. In some ways it is an advantage and in some ways a drawback that Professor Pearson is a mathematician. The need of applying mathematical methods to variation and heredity should be emphasized and stress on the method has permitted the treatment and unification of varied material. But it is also true that so long as there are but few biologists who are mathematicians, there is danger that certain methods may become prematurely crystallized and these special methods may be regarded as an end rather than as a tool. In addition to Biometrica there has been established this year a Treasury of Human Inheritance, devoted to family histories, including diseases, physical traits and mental qualities. Then there are two series of memoirs, one entitled Biometric Series, the other Studies in National Deterioration, published at the expense of the Drapers' Company. The first of these contains chiefly Professor Pearson's more recent mathematical contributions to the theory of evolution, while the second includes so far three studies, one on the relation of fertility in men to social status and two on inheritance and infection in tuberculosis. Lastly, there is a lecture series, of which but one has been issued, and a memoir series from the eugenics laboratory. The memoirs include a study of the inheritance of ability from the Oxford class lists and of the relation between success in examinations and in after life; inheritance of insanity, the resemblance of first cousins and the inheritance of vision.

recently issued monograph from the Eugenics Laboratory on the