Fig. 96.—Francis Galton, Born 1822.
Galton.—The application of statistical methods is well illustrated in the theories of Francis Galton (Fig. 96). This distinguished English statistician was born in 1822, and is still living. He is the grandson of Dr. Erasmus Darwin and the cousin of Charles. After publishing books on his travels in Africa, he began the experimental study of heredity and, in 1871, he read before the Royal Society of London a paper on Pangenesis, in which he departed from that theory as developed by Darwin. The observations upon which he based his conclusions were made upon the transfusion of blood in rabbits and their after-breeding. He studied the inheritance of stature, and other characteristics, in human families, and the inheritance of spots on the coat of certain hounds, and was led to formulate a law of ancestral inheritance which received its clearest expression in his book, Natural Inheritance, published in 1889.
He undertook to determine the proportion of heritage that is, on the average, contributed by each parent, grandparent, etc., and arrived at the following conclusions: "The parents together contribute one-half the total heritage, the four grandparents together one-fourth, the eight great-grandparents one-sixteenth, and all the remainder of the ancestry one-sixteenth."
Carl Pearson has investigated this law of ancestral inheritance. He substantiates the law in its principle, but modifies slightly the mathematical expression of it.
This field of research, which involves measurements and mathematics and the handling of large bodies of statistics, has been considerably cultivated, so that there is in existence in England a journal devoted exclusively to biometrics, which is edited by Carl Pearson, and is entitled Biometrika.
The whole subject of heredity is undergoing a thorough revision. What seems to be most needed at the present time is more exact experimentation, carried through several generations, together with more searching investigations into the microscopical constitution of egg and sperm, and close analysis of just what takes place during fertilization and the early stages of the development of the individual. Experiments are being conducted on an extended scale in endowed institutions. There is notably in this country, established under the Carnegie Institution, a station for experimental evolution, at Cold Spring Harbor, New York, of which C.B. Davenport is director. Other experimental stations in England and on the Continent have been established, and we are to expect as the result of coördinated and continuous experimental work many substantial contributions to the knowledge of inheritance.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] There are a few exceptions to this rule, as in the eggs of plant-lice, etc., in which a single polar globule is produced.