Hospital Reports. The originals and all the components have been exhibited on several occasions.

In the lower division of the Plate will be found three composites, each made from a large number of faces, unselected, except on the ground of the disease under which they were suffering. When only few portraits are used, there must be some moderate resemblance between them, or the result would be blurred; but here, dealing with as many as 56, 100, and 50 cases respectively, the combination of any medley group results in an ideal expression.

It will be observed that the composite of 56 female faces is made by the blending of two other composites, both of which are given. The history was this--I took the 56 portraits and sorted them into two groups; in the first of these were 20 portraits that showed a tendency to thin features, in the other group there were 36 that showed a tendency to thickened features. I made composites of each of them as shown in the Plate. Now it will be remarked that, notwithstanding the attempt to make two contrasted groups, the number of mediocre cases was so great that the composities of the two groups are much alike. If I had divided the 56 into two haphazard groups, the results would have been closely alike, as I know from abundant experience of the kind. The co-composite of the two will be observed to have an intermediate expression. The test and measure of statistical truth lies in the degree of accordance between results obtained from different batches of instances of the same generic class. It will be gathered from these instances that composite portraiture may attain statistical constancy, within limits not easily distinguished by the eye, after some 30 haphazard portraits of the same class have been combined. This at least has been my experience thus far.

The two faces illustrative of the same type of tubercular disease are very striking; the uppermost is photographically interesting as a case of predominance of one peculiarity, happily of no harm to the effect of the ideal wan face. It is that one of the patients had a sharply-checked black and white scarf, whose pattern has asserted itself unduly in the composite. In such cases I ought to throw the too clearly defined picture a little out of focus. The way in which the varying brightness of different pictures is reduced to a uniform standard of illumination is described in the Appendix.

It must be clearly understood that these portraits do not profess to give the whole story of the physiognomy of phthisis. I have not room to give illustrations of other types--namely, that with coarse and blunted features, or the strumous one, nor any of the intermediates. These have been discussed chiefly by Dr. Mahomed in the memoir alluded to above.

In the large experience I have had of sorting photographs, literally by the thousand, while making experiments with composites, I have been struck by certain general impressions. The consumptive patients consisted of many hundred cases, including a considerable proportion of very ignoble specimens of humanity. Some were scrofulous and misshapen, or suffered from various loathsome forms of inherited disease; most were ill nourished. Nevertheless, in studying their portraits the pathetic interest prevailed, and I returned day after day to my tedious work of classification, with a liking for my materials. It was quite otherwise with the criminals. I did not adequately appreciate the degradation of their expressions for some time; at last the sense of it took firm hold of me, and I cannot now handle the portraits without overcoming by an effort the aversion they suggest.

I am sure that the method of composite portraiture opens a fertile field of research to ethnologists, but I find it very difficult to do much single-handed, on account of the difficulty of obtaining the necessary materials. As a rule, the individuals must be specially photographed. The portraits made by artists are taken in every conceivable aspect and variety of light and shade, but for the purpose in question the aspect and the shade must be the same throughout. Group portraits would do to work from, were it not for the strong out-of-door light under which they are necessarily taken, which gives an unwonted effect to the expression of the faces. Their scale also is too small to give a sufficiently clear picture when enlarged. I may say that the scale of the portraits need not be uniform, as my apparatus enlarges or reduces as required, at the same time that it superposes the images; but the portraits of the heads should never be less than twice the size of that of the Queen on a halfpenny piece.

I heartily wish that amateur photographers would seriously take up the subject of composite portraiture as applied to different sub-types of the varying races of men. I have already given more time to perfecting the process and experimenting with it than I can well spare.

BODILY QUALITIES

The differences in the bodily qualities that are the usual subjects of anthropometry are easily dealt with, and are becoming widely registered in many countries. We are unfortunately destitute of trustworthy measurements of Englishmen of past generations to enable us to compare class with class, and to learn how far the several sections of the English nation may be improving or deteriorating. We shall, however, hand useful information concerning our own times to our successors, thanks principally to the exertions of an Anthropometric Committee established five years ago by the British Association, who have collected and partly classified and published a large amount of facts, besides having induced several institutions, such as Marlborough College, to undertake a regular system of anthropometric record. I am not, however, concerned here with the labours of this committee, nor with the separate valuable publications of some of its members, otherwise than in one small particular which appears to show that the English population as a whole, or perhaps I should say the urban portion of it, is in some sense deteriorating. It is that the average stature of the older persons measured by or for the committee has not been found to decrease steadily with their age, but sometimes the reverse.[1] This contradicts observations made on the heights of the same men at different periods, whose stature after middle age is invariably reduced by the shrinking of the cartilages. The explanation offered was that the statistical increase of stature with age should be ascribed to the survival of the more stalwart. On reconsideration, I am inclined to doubt the adequacy of the explanation, and partly to account for the fact by a steady, slight deterioration of stature in successive years; in the urban population owing to the conditions of their lives, and in the rural population owing to the continual draining away of the more stalwart of them to the towns.

It cannot be doubted that town life is harmful to the town population. I have myself investigated its effect on fertility (see Appendix B), and found that taking on the one hand a number of rural parishes, and on the other hand the inhabitants of a medium town, the former reared, nearly twice as many adult grandchildren as the latter. The vital functions are so closely related that an inferiority in the production of healthy children very probably implies a loss of vigour generally, one sign of which is a diminution of stature.

Though the bulk of the population may deteriorate, there are many signs that the better housed and fed portion of it improves. In the earlier years of this century the so-called manly sports of boxing and other feats of strength ranked high among the national amusements. A man who was [1] successful in these became the hero of a large and demonstrative circle of admirers, and it is to be presumed that the best boxer, the best pedestrian, and so forth, was the best adapted