16 Francis Galton. - On the Anthropometric Laboratory
Appendix II.
The value of the results obtained at the laboratory may be questioned on the ground that the persons who applied to be measured were not random specimens of the crowd who visited the Exhibition and that the latter themselves were no fair sample of the British population, nor of any well-defined section of it. I have no reply to make to this objection, except that it should not be pushed unreasonably far. On the other hand, it may justly be claimed that results which, taken each by itself, have no great value as absolute determinations, may nevertheless be of considerable importance relatively to one another, by affording materials for testing the relations between various bodily faculties and the influences of occupation and birthplace. Their discussion in any form is a laborious task, and the portion of it I now submit is very far indeed from exhausting the uses to which the laboratory records can be put. It deals mostly with the very results that I have just spoken of as being the least valuable; but I have taken them in hand first, because it was a necessary preliminary to any further discussion. I also wished to utilise the copious material at my disposal to exemplify what I trust will be found a convenient development of a method of statistical treatment I have long advocated, by presenting in a compact and methodical form (Table II) a great deal more concerning the distribution of the measurements of man than has hitherto been attempted in a numerical form.
The following brief summary of maximum measurements will be interesting: --
9,337 persons were measured, of whom 4,726 were adult males, and 1,657 adult females. The highest records during the whole time that the laboratory was open were those shown in Table I.
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