AN IDEAL GENSUS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3297, 16 August 1911, Page 7

AN IDEAL GENSUS.

WHAT WOULD BE ITS AIMS. What some people of scientific mind regard as an ideal census—and what others will consider an appalling inquisition—is foreshadowed in a memorial by the Royal Anthropological Society. This Society’s chief aim is to see whether mankind is going backward or forward, and why; and among. its subsidiary aims is the collection if information about all the races of the British Empire. Hitherto it has been uphill work. There have been comparatively few who felt any real pleasure in being measured or having the color of their eyes and the width of their foreheads tabulated and filed for reference. One of the chief movers in this appeal Mr. John Gray, of the Patent Office, explained its aims as follows: “ Our ideal would be to have the census enlarged so as to give full particulars about the physique of all the Empire peoples—their height, girth, skull measurements, and strength of vision, and the color of hair and py* This would take an enormous time, and the enumerators would have to be far more numerous than now, as well as being specially trained. It has been done, however, in India, the enumerators doing the measuring. A more practicable step would be to have a staff of experts in each area, say, a county, who would measure people jwho volunteered. Three per cent, of the population would be ample. In Canada they have started on these lines. We want to see it in full swing all over the Empire. At present our scanty statistics do not justify pronouncements. Galton estimated that we were a far less athletic race than the ancient Greeks, but it has been pretty certainly established from the examination of skulls of skeletons, that the average Englishman of to-day is practically the same, physically, as the Neolithic man who lived 15,000 years ago. But in these days of quick changes physical deterioration may go on rapidly owing to town life, machinery that does away with manual labor, impure air, and other causes. When the physical census is established we can put our finger at once on the weak spots in the nation’s health sheet.”