I. Family likeness in stature

Abstract

I propose to express by formulæ the relation that subsists between the statures of specified men and those of their kinsmen in any given degree, and to explain the processes through which family peculiarities of stature gradually diminish, until in every remote degree of kinship the group of kinsmen becomes undistinguishable from a group selected out of the general population at random. I shall determine the constants in my formulæ referring to kinship with a useful degree of precision. These constants may provisionally and with some reservation be held applicable to other human peculiarities than stature, while the formulæ themselves are, I presume, applicable to every one-dimensioned faculty that all men possess in some degree, but that different men possess in different degrees.