After the reading and discussion of this letter it was resolved on the motion of Mr. Brabrook, seconded by Mr. Atkinson, "That the Council comply with the request of the Committee."

The Council has entered on the work thus entrusted to its care, and a working Committee is at present occupied with the subject.

As the outcome of a discussion on the paper read before the Institute some time ago by Mr. Reginald Stuart Poole, a Committee of the British Association was appointed at Birmingham in 1886, for the purpose of procuring ethnological photographs, &c., from the Egyptian monuments, and it was afterwards arranged that a set of these should be presented to the Institute. Mr. Flinders Petrie very ably carried out this work, and brought home last year a valuable collection of paper squeezes from which excellent plaster casts have been prepared. Some of these were exhibited at the Manchester meeting of the British Association, and subsequently at the South Kensington Museum. It is believed that the collection will find a final resting place in one of our national Museums.1

It may be mentioned that the interests of anthropology were well cared for at the last meeting of the British Association. Not only did the Anthropological Section, under Prof. Sayce, with Dr. Garson and Mr. Bloxam as Secretaries, have a successful meeting, but an anthropological laboratory was open daily in connection with this section, at which between two and three hundred individuals were measured.

Among the events of the year bearing upon the work of the Institute mention may be made of the issue of the volume by General Pitt-Rivers, describing his recent extensive excavations near Rushmore. This largely illustrated volume has been privately printed by the author, but has been generously distributed to those who are interested in the archæological branches of anthropological science.

On the motion of Mr. S. E. BOUVERIE-PUSEY, seconded by the Rev. E. S. DEWICK, the Reports of the Treasurer and the Council were adopted.

The following address by the President was then read:

1 Members of the Institute may be glad to know that photographs of these casts may be obtained at the mere cost of printing copies, from Mr. Browning Hogg, of High Street, Bromley.

ADDRESS delivered at the ANNIVERSARY MEETING of the ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE of GREAT BRITAIN and IRELAND January 24th, 1888.

By FRANCIS GALTON, F.R.S., President.

On behalf of this Institute, and sanctioned by their Council, I had the honour of delivering a short course of Lectures in December last, on Heredity and Nurture, at the South Kensington Museum. Their object was to test the reality of a supposed demand for information on such subjects, and so far as it was possible to judge from the results, there seemed to be a widely spread interest in the matter. It gives me pleasure to express my obligations to the Lords Commissioners of Education for the free use of their theatre, and to the many officers at South Kensington who aided in the various arrangements. Major Abney and General Festing exhibited in action their beautiful apparatus for testing the colour sense, which was described in the Bakerian Lecture before the Royal Society last year, and at the conclusion of each lecture Dr. Garson, Mr. Rudler, and Mr. Bloxam explained the working of the anthropometric instruments that were laid on side tables. Whether it be feasible for this Society hereafter to promote other lectures bearing on special topics in Heredity and Nurture, is a question on which I do not feel competent as yet to form an opinion, though I have no doubt that hopeful attempts to enlist popular interest in any branch of anthropology will always meet with your approval.

These lectures have led to at least one tangible result. I took the opportunity to reiterate my often expressed regret that no anthropometric laboratory existed in this country, at which children and adults of both sexes could at small cost have their faculties measured by the best methods known to science, and a record kept for their future use. I explained how difficult it would be to maintain such a laboratory, and to make it effective except under the shelter of some important institution, that

was daily frequented by the class of persons likely to make use of it. Previously, I had applied for permission to erect such a laboratory at the South Kensington Museum, but the difficulties of a suitable position seemed insuperable. Thanks, however, to a recent suggestion of General Donnelly, and with his cordial aid, and also with that of General Festing, a successful application was made to Her Majesty's Commissioners of 1851 for a small portion of the Arcades, rent free, that adjoins the Western Galleries at South Kensington, containing the collection of scientific instruments, wherein to erect a wooden building for the laboratory. It will be connected with and have its only entrance from the gallery. The building has (at the time when I revise these pages) been completed under the obliging superintendence of General Festing, and is opened to the public, though as yet incompletely equipped. I append in a foot note a copy of the printed notice. In one sense it is small, but it offers sufficient accommodation for the purpose immediately in view, which is little more than a development on

1 Anthropometric laboratory for the measurement in various ways of human form and faculty. Entered from the Western Galleries containing the Science Collection of the South Kensington Museum.

This laboratory is established by Mr. Francis Galton for the following purposes:

1. For the use of those who desire to be accurately measured in many ways, either to obtain timely warning of remediable faults in development, or to learn their powers.

2. For keeping a methodical register of the principal measurements of each person, of which he may at any future time obtain a copy under reasonable restrictions. His initials and date of birth will be entered in the register, but not his name. The names are indexed in a separate book.

3. For supplying information on the methods, practice, and uses of human

measurement.

4. For anthropometric experiment and research, and for obtaining data for statistical discussion.

Charges for making the principal measurements :—' -Three pence each, to those who are already on the Register. Fourpence each, to those who are not :-One page of the Register will thenceforward be assigned to them, and a few extra measurements will be made, chiefly for future identification.

The Superintendent is charged with the control of the laboratory and with determining in each case, which, if any, of the extra measurements may be made, and under what conditions.

a more permanent basis of the anthropometric laboratory that I established in the International Health Exhibition of 1884, and at which nearly 10,000 persons were measured. I propose now to preserve copies of the records in such a form that the persons measured may always be able to refer to them so long as the laboratory exists. There will be one page of a folio register book assigned to each person in which the measurements made on successive occasions will be copied on successive lines, to show at a glance the personal development. No names will appear in the registers, but only initials and dates of birth; the names and the mothers' surnames will be entered in a separate book. There will be besides a brief list of questions, both personal and family, which the applicant for measurement will be invited to answer, one of them is whether the parents were first cousins. The copies of the measurements retained in the laboratory will be useful in two ways, the one as statistical documents, and the other as records always accessible under proper restrictions to the persons measured, or to their representatives. I conceive that this arrangement will facilitate the desirable, practice of keeping family records, because so far as members of any family may have been measured, it will be feasible, with their concurrence, to obtain copies of those measurements. I am by no means one of those who desire to confine anthropometry to the simpler physical data, but I wish to extend it as widely as the possibilities of measurements, however rough, may allow. Under judicious statistical treatment, rough measurements of many individuals are capable, as we all know, of yielding trustworthy results, and if we ascertain the degree of precision of our measurements, we can treat them individually on scientific principles, assigning to them their just weight, however small their precision may be. The off-hand measurements that can alone be made of a person who is only a few minutes under experiment, in respect to the delicacy of his senses, and of his reaction-times, are far better than none at all. They will at least serve to indicate such marked peculiarities as may merit more sustained examination.

The conditions of the laboratory admit only of measurements of the living person and in clothes, and we must make the best of these conditions. It would be undesirable to ask even that the shoes should be taken off. When persons of all ranks and of both sexes are admitted, and many operations have to be gone through in a brief time, it is necessary to measure those persons in their usual indoor clothing. Quite enough can be done under this restriction to furnish a record of the rate of growth and development of the young, and to yield statistical data of considerable value. We can at least record the eye colour; the length, breadth, and possibly the height of head; the stature in shoes less the thickness of the heel, the height above chair when sitting squarely in it, and the height of the knee above the ground; also the spread of the arms from finger tip to finger tip, the length of the middle finger, which is correlated with the length of the foot, and that from finger tip to elbow. These measurements give directly or inferentially the total stature and total arm-spread, and the respective lengths of the trunk and the two leg-bones; also the lengths of the upper and lower arm and of the middle finger. We also can easily and rapidly obtain the lung capacity, strength of squeeze with the right and left hand, keenness of sight with right and left eye, and the colour sense. More delicate apparatus will be at hand to be used occasionally, to test the remaining senses, the psychophysical reactions, and such other physiological constants as may be found feasible and convenient to measure.

The curious memoir by M. Alphonse Bertillon in the "Annales de Démographie Internationale," republished as a pamphlet in 1881,1 and the memoirs read at the International Penitentiary Congress at Rome in 1885,2 by that gentlemen and by M. Louis Herbette, Director of the Penitentiary Department of the Interior,

1 Une application pratique de l'anthropométrie sur un procédé d'identification, permettant de retrouver le nom d'un récidiviste au moyen de son seul signalement, &c. (G. Masson, Paris, 1881).

2 "Les Signalements Anthropometriques." Conférence faite au Congrès Pénitentiare International de Rome (G. Masson, Paris, 1886).