of horses, cattle, dogs, etc., are brief, and the breeder of any
such stock lives long enough to acquire a large amount of experience
from his own personal observation. A man, however, can rarely be
familiar with more than two or three generations of his
contemporaries before age has begun to check his powers; his working
experience must therefore be chiefly based upon records. Believing,
as I do, that human eugenics will become recognised before long as a
study of the highest practical importance, it seems to me that no
time ought to be lost in encouraging and directing a habit of
compiling personal and family histories. If the necessary materials
be brought into existence, it will require no more than zeal and
persuasiveness on the part of the future investigator to collect as
large a store of them as he may require.




UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF PECULIARITIES.

The importance of submitting our faculties to measurement lies in
the curious unconsciousness in which we are apt to live of our
personal peculiarities, and which our intimate friends often fail to
remark. I have spoken of the ignorance of elderly persons of their
deafness to high notes, but even the existence of such a peculiarity
as colour blindness was not suspected until the memoir of Dalton in
1794. That one person out of twenty-nine or thereabouts should be
unable to distinguish a red from a green, without knowing that he
had any deficiency of colour sense, and without betraying his
deficiency to his friends, seems perfectly incredible to the other
twenty-eight; yet as a matter of fact he rarely does either the one