From Francis Galton [after 22 December 1871]1
⟨1 page missing⟩
Butler, not only when sleeping in an arm chair, but chiefly & habitually in bed & in both cases it is when he is fast asleep, not when dozing.2 In his father’s case, it was the same but almost wholly, if not wholly, in bed, for I find the arm chair evidence is weak. The mistake was mine, and was due to my having seen the narrators while sitting in their chairs imitate the movement, whence it never occurred to me that it took place elsewhere than in a chair3 The wives of the two Headmasters were, & Mrs. M. Butler’s is, exceedingly fidgetted by this curious & continually recurring see-saw manoeuvres.4 The granddaughter5 has not, or had not been sufficiently observed—the assertion of her having the trick was based upon a remark of her nurse—but I shall soon hear more. & will then send you a revised statement—if not too late for your book.
Crookes wrote to me that Home’s preference was very important,—for the experiments were far more succesful when he was the medium, than when any one else was & he is now in Russia & will not return till May.6 So I will wait.
Very sincerely yours | Francis Galton
Footnotes
Bibliography
ODNB: Oxford dictionary of national biography: from the earliest times to the year 2000. (Revised edition.) Edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. 60 vols. and index. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2004.
Summary
Gives his account of H. M. Butler’s apparently inherited habit.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-8126
- From
- Francis Galton
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- unstated
- Source of text
- DAR 105: A42–3
- Physical description
- ALS 3pp inc
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 8126,” accessed on 28 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-8126.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 19