[6] See Cournot, Essai sur les fondements de nos connaissances. Vol. I.
p. 71.
[7] It deserves notice that considerations of this kind have found their way into the Law Courts though of course without any attempt at numerical valuation. Thus, in the celebrated De Ros trial, in so far as the evidence was indirect, one main ground of suspicion seems to have been that Lord De Ros, when dealing at whist, obtained far more court cards than chance could be expected to assign him; and that in consequence his average gains for several years in succession were unusually large. The counsel for the defence urged that still larger gains had been secured by other players without suspicion of unfairness,—(I cannot find that it was explained over how large an area of experience these instances had been sought; nor how far the magnitude of the stakes, as distinguished from the number of successes, accounted for that of the actual gains),—and that large allowance must be made for skill where the actual gains were computed. (See the Times’ report, Feb. 11, 1837.)
[8] Metretike. At the end of this volume will be found a useful list of a number of other publications by the same author on allied topics.
[9] That is, if we look simply to statistical results, as Arbuthnott did, and as we should do if we were examining the tosses of a penny. If the remarkable theory of Dr Düsing (Die Regulierung des Geschlechts-verhältnisses… Jena, 1884) be confirmed, the matter would assume a somewhat different aspect. He attempts to show, both on physiological grounds, and by analysis of statistics referring to men and animals, that there is a decidedly compensatory process at work. That is, if for any cause either sex attains a preponderance, agencies are at once set in motion which tend to redress the balance. This is a modification and improvement of the older theory, that the relative age of the parents has something to do with the sex of the offspring.
Quetelet (Letters, p. 61) has attempted to prove a proposition about the succession of male and female births by certain experiments supposed to be tried upon an urn with black and white balls in it. But this is going too far. (See the note at the end of this chapter.)
[10] It is precisely analogous to the conclusion that the flowers of the daisies (as distinguished from the plants, v.
[p. 109]) are not distributed at random, but have a tendency to go in groups of two or more. Mere observation shows this: and then, from our knowledge of the growth of plants we may infer that these little groups spring from the same root.
[11] In this discussion, writers often speak of the probability of a “physical connection” between these double stars. The phrase seems misleading, for on the usual hypothesis of universal gravitation all stars are physically connected, by gravitation. It is therefore better, as above, to make it simply a question of relative proximity, and to leave it to astronomy to infer what follows from unusual proximity.
[12] Professor Forbes in the paper in the Philosophical Magazine already referred to (Ch. VII.