Product Description
The first abridged (and thus digestible) edition of a classic 19th Century manual for the backcountry traveler—its advice is both deliciously bizarre and surprisingly relevant for 21st century adventurers. · A novelty item at 124 pages—one-third the length of current editions available only in unabridged facsimile reproductions · An interesting historical document that offers an early glimpse into the culture of outdoor recreation · Guaranteed to both entertain and instruct "Carrion is not noxious to starving men." This is one of the countless potentially useful bits of information contained within Sir Francis Galton’s fascinating but unwieldy (366 pages) The Art of Travel. First published in 1855, the book became a bible of self-sufficiency for a host of now famous explorers including Sir Richard Burton. Galton’s work is now available in a condensed edition that highlights the amusing and the practical while losing extraneous material and minutia such as how many fleabites he endured on one trip and how many bush ticks bit him on another.

The Art of Travel recounts Galton’s adventures as one of the first Europeans to explore the interior of southwestern Africa. His quaint advice on interacting with "savages," handling elephants, and stopping asses from braying will make you laugh. But you’ll want to take notes on his instructions on how to find water in the desert, navigate by the stars, or follow tracks in the dark. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A Delightful Old Book
Sub-Title: From the Peculiar to Practical, Advice From a 19th Century Explorer ==There are a lot of books on how to go camping, what to take on a hiking trip, and so on. But where would you be able to find that 'Camels are only fit for use in a few countries, and require practiced attendants; thorns and rocks lame them, hills sadly impede them, and a wet slippery soil entirely stops them.'

This book was written about 150 years ago when a hike often meant something like spending a year or two out in the bush, hiking around Africa.

The idea for this book came to Sir Francis Galton when he was exploring South-western Africa (now Namibia) in 1850-51. Upon his return to England he began reading and interviewing other travellers who had been to different exotic locals. And from this combined with practical experience and testing.

It makes for a delightful read and forever thankful that we live in a more advanced time.

A Great Guide For the Canteen-Toting Traveler in All of Us
Although I would not consider myself an adventurer on par with Sir Francis Galton, I found The Art of Rough Travel to be interesting, at times entertaining, and surprisingly informative.Not only is this book valuable from a historical perspective (in terms of the viewpoints and moral judgments of a 19th century explorer), but it also offers some ingenuitive methods for dealing with unexpected and sometimes obscure travel dilemmas.

I discovered, for example, that natural sweat and dust caked onto the body while traveling can be hugely protective to the skin and, in these cases, bathing should be avoided.There are also tips on everything from dealing with stubborn livestock to filtering mud into water and finding food in scarce or unknown environments.Helpful side notes (most of which were written by Galton) include biographical sketches of explorers mentioned in the text, explanatory pen-and-ink drawings, and brief additional tips.

Rough Travel's format made it an easy book for me to pick up and read at just about any time- whether I had five minutes to spare or forty.Chapter and section divisions are frequent, thus making it good for quick reference as well.My only criticism would be that Galton can be long-winded at times and some of the material seemed almost too obscure to ever actually need.But I suppose that's where the novelty comes in:If you're about to be a contestant on Survivor, you will probably find this book to be incredibly practical and almost all of its information to bevery necessary.But if you're one of those bookish types (like me) who likes to live vicariously through the adventures of others, this book will simply feed your unfulfilled traveling fantasies and make you feel as though you could spend a few months out in the bush, living on the land.Personally, I like that feeling.

This book is a perfect choice for all of us who hunger for little-known survival tips and secretly nurse dreams to become famous explorers.And of course, for all of you who really are.

Interesting for historical purposes
An artifact of times gone by, this is an interesting read but not a source of modern knowledge for travel in the backcountry.The book is basically a collection of notes and advice from an explorer in the 1800s.Most of it outdated and not environmentally friendly it is still a good read for people interested in the history of explorer style travel of the past.

19th-Century Travel Advice
We see ourselves as skilled travelers - high fat, high salt fast food dispensaries are close at hand at every highway interchange. Motels are abundant, roads are maintained and well lighted. Travel is easy, quick and convenient. Emergency services stand ready to assist the extreme situation. We rarely think ahead more than a few hours. Impatience runs rampant and we think nothing of substituting oil for knowledge.

It is 1855 CE, you are dropped off in the middle of a very large pristine area and are several several weeks away from any kind of assistance. You need uncommon sense and collective wisdom to remain healthy and alive. As with "The Gods Must Be Crazy," an object falls from the sky and lands in front of you, it is the "The Art of Rough Travel". Just as Shackelton's transAntarctic expedition "Endurance" details the last efforts of the "Great Age of Exploration," The "Art of Rough Travel" is a well thought gift from 19th-Century explorer Sir Francis Galton. Part history, part whisper in the ear, part nice to know, part critical to know for comfort and survival.

The light weight and highly effective clothing, equipment and shelter that we now take for granted is fascinating compared to what was not known just a few short years ago. Much of Galton's advice we now ignore or consider obvious. Galton covers a range of topics including clothing, beasts of burden, climbing and mountaineering, swimming, rafts and boats, fords and bridges, potable water, food, game, fishing, fire, bedding and bivouac, tents, bush remedies, route finding, signals, caches, miscellany and other trivia.

Sleeping bags have not changed much since the use of "knapsack bags" in 1825 by French douaniers who watched the mountain passes of the Pyrenean frontier. A running series of sidebar quotes hold the main text together including, "Mules have odd secret ways, strange fancies, and lurking vice;" "It is nervous work going over the edge of a cliff for the first time; however, the sensation does not include giddiness;" when swimming with horses, "Seize his tail and let him tow you across;" on travel: "As a general rule, it is by no means the heaviest and most solid things that endure the best;" on revolting food that may save the lives of men: "Carrion is not noxious to starving men;" on a bivouac: "It is wretched beyond expression for a man to lie shivering beneath a scanty covering and to feel the night air become hourly more raw, while his life-blood has less power to withstand it;" on shelter: "A tent should never be pitched in a slovenly way;" in the case of death: "Any trinkets he may have had should of course be sealed up and put aside;" and upon the conclusion of a journey, "Make presents of all your traveling gear and old guns to your native attendants, for they will be mere litter in England."

Galton was a one-half cousin of Charles Darwin and made significant contributions to the fields of meteorology, statistics, psychology and forensics. Galton originated the studies of twins and delved into the study of human heredity. Editor Kitty Harmon says that "I certainly wouldn't want to be a contestant on "Survivor" without a copy stuffed into my bikini." The wisdom of this book was not developed loafing in club chairs, but by first-hand experience.

As stated by Agassiz, "Learn from nature, not books." Galton help(ed) you learn how to "read the landscape." ... Read more

Product Description
In the 1860s Francis Galton set out to examine the extent to which genius is hereditary. This research led in 1869 to the publication of Hereditary Genius, the aim of which was ""to show" that a man's natural abilities are derived by inheritance, under exactly the same limitations as are the form and physical features of the whole organic world."

In pursuing this analysis, Galton's first problem was to develop a method for assessing high levels of mental ability. The approach that he took was to assume that mental ability is closely correlated with eminence (reputation) in a given profession. As he described it, "I feel convinced that no man can achieve a very high reputation without being gifted with very high abilities; and "few who possess these very high abilities can fail in achieving eminence."

Galton then attempted to marshal evidence in favor of the proposition that mental ability is inherited. First he examined the shape of the distribution of mental ability. Analyzing the scores of 200 candidates who had taken the Mathematical Tripos at Cambridge as well as those that had been obtained by 72 candidates for civil service positions, Galton showed that these scores (and hence presumably the psychological characteristics underlying the scores) were distributed in much the same way as inheritable physical traits, that is to say, normally.

While this similarity in the shape of the distribution of mental and physical characteristics did not in itself imply the inheritability of mental traits, it was consistent with Galton's claim. More importantly, it also allowed him to estimate the percentages of men that would be expected at each of a series of "levels" of mental ability ranging from the highest to the lowest. This, in turn, provided a standard against which the hypothesis of inheritability of mental ability could be evaluated. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The nespaper Catholic World was right in 1870
I live in Brazil.I'll be sincere.I tried to read this trash-book, on an internet site.This book is so weak, that I didn't finished it.I read a review published at a catholic newspaper, The Catholic World , in 1870.About this trash-book, cathoilc world newspaper was right and this, in 1870!

Well this book has dozens of failures.To example, human inteligence is the subject of this book, but this book never shows, really what is human inteligence.

The author himself never had a son.He didn't had descendency, something normal among eugenicists, such as he.Eugenicists were the ecologists of XIX Century.A brazilian told more than forty years ago:"I respect the idiots, because they are eternal."

Primary resource material of the greatest interest
The first quantitative analysis of human mental ability. Galton introduced the notion that mental ability was normally distributed in much the same ways as are physical traits. His strong nativistic perspective served as the point of origin for the nature/nurture debate in its modern form. ... Read more

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This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's large-scale digitization efforts. The Library seeks to preserve the intellectual content of items in a manner that facilitates and promotes a variety of uses. The digital reformatting process results in an electronic version of the original text that can be both accessed online and used to create new print copies. The Library also understands and values the usefulness of print and makes reprints available to the public whenever possible. This book and hundreds of thousands of others can be found in the HathiTrust, an archive of the digitized collections of many great research libraries. For access to the University of Michigan Library's digital collections, please see http://www.lib.umich.edu and for information about the HathiTrust, please visit http://www.hathitrust.org ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

A Quirky Book For A Quirky Man
This book is quite quirky, about an individual largely forgotten today but whose innovations in statistics, data gathering techniques, and survival tips are still used today. The book paints a convincing picture of a man who sought a reputation as a man of science but who was (as all human beings are) filled with rather dark sides that showed in his snobbery and in his mania for collecting data. The book appears a bit too sympathetic to evolution and to the moral difficulties that follow from rejecting God's standards, seeking to condemn Galton for his Nazi-esque eugenic fantasies while not understanding the Darwinian root of such problems. Nonetheless, the book is a fine one about a compelling and unusual figure who will remain obscure to most of those who take advantage of his quirky innovations.

The book to choose for a general bio of Galton.
An enjoyable introduction to Sir Francis Galton, the brilliant Victorian who gave us weather maps, fingerprints, and (on a less positive note) eugenics. Galton loved to measure things; wherever he was, whatever he was doing, it seems that he found something in his surroundings to measure.His curiosity and enthusiasm for life and discovery make him a sympathetic character even considering his racism, sexism, and classism; he was, after all, a product of his upper-middle-class Victorian environment.

This version of his life story is a good read; choose it instead of Gillham's version unless you want to get into the actual science of what he was doing.One major fault of the Brookes book: it doesn't have an index. Gillham's book has an extensive one.

What would make a Galton biography one step better: more analysis of why Galton became who he was and perhaps a deeper look into his own writings, along with the impact that Galton has on science and psychology today.

For more info on Galton, go to the website [...]
... Read more

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CONTENTS: The Possible Improvement of the Human Breed under Existing Conditions of Law and SentimentEugenics, its Definition, Scope, and AimsRestrictions in MarriageStudies in National EugenicsEugenics as a Factor in ReligionProbability, the Foundation of EugenicsLocal Associations for Promoting EugenicsSir Francis Galton (1822-1911) was a Victorian polymath: geographer, meteorologist, tropical explorer, founder of differential psychology, inventor of fingerprint identification, pioneer of statistical correlation and regression, convinced hereditarian, eugenicist, proto-geneticist, half-cousin of Charles Darwin and best-selling author. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The mother of ecology
I tried to read this garbage, here in Brazil.I found this garbage on internet.This garbage is biased, false, absurd and bigoted.Ironically, the author never had a son.He was sterile, as so many other eugenicists.
Today, we are worried about the menace to the nature.While this garbage was beeing published, there was a menace to race.
This book has many pages about inteligence, but what was or is inteligence?
Today eugenics is called ecology.
This garbage has just some uses:
1-To see how a pseudo-science is preached.The same tecnicks are used today for ecologists.
2-To see stooge can be an intellectual.
3-To hee that mankind is ever, looking for to believe in absurds.Witch-hunting, eugenics, ecology are manias at their times.

The Epoch Breaking Writings of an Historic Pioneer
Reprint of the original epoch-breaking 1909 publication by one of the greatest scholars of modern times. Sir Francis Galton was not only a pioneer of climatology, demography, and statistics, but also the founder of modern eugenic thought.
These essays summarize his conclusions as to the importance of heredity and the need for eugenic measures to counteract the dysgenic influences, which were already in his time beginning to affect the more advanced nations of the world. ... Read more

Product Description
Few scientists have made lasting contributions to as many fields as Francis Galton. He was an important African explorer, travel writer, and geographer. He was the meteorologist who discovered the anticyclone, a pioneer in using fingerprints to identify individuals, the inventor of regression and correlation analysis in statistics, and the founder of the eugenics movement. Now, Nicholas Gillham paints an engaging portrait of this Victorian polymath.
The book traces Galton's ancestry (he was the grandson of Erasmus Darwin and the cousin of Charles Darwin), upbringing, training as a medical apprentice, and experience as a Cambridge undergraduate. It recounts in colorful detail Galton's adventures as leader of his own expedition in Namibia. Darwin was always a strong influence on his cousin and a turning point in Galton's life was the publication of the Origin of Species. Thereafter, Galton devoted most of his life to human heredity, using then novel methods such as pedigree analysis and twin studies to argue that talent and character were inherited and that humans could be selectively bred to enhance these qualities. To this end, he founded the eugenics movement which rapidly gained momentum early in the last century. After Galton's death, however, eugenics took a more sinister path, as in the United States, where by 1913 sixteen states had involuntary sterilization laws, and in Germany, where the goal of racial purity was pushed to its horrific limit in the "final solution." Galton himself, Gillham writes, would have been appalled by the extremes to which eugenics was carried.
Here then is a vibrant biography of a remarkable scientist as well as a superb portrait of science in the Victorian era. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Was hoping for better
I found the earlier part of the book more interesting than the belabored latter part.The book needed a good editor.The number of grammatical mistakes and typos was far more than should be allowed in a scholarly book of this type.

The Title Sums it Up
A word to the wise, heed the title and sub-title of this book.It is not a very good all around biography of Sir Francis Galton.The book does bring you up to his first accomplishment, African exploration, very directly. Other chapters occasionally touch on some of his life-milestones like marriage and his relationship with the Royal Geographical Society.The majority of the book discusses his theories and scientific achievements.The book delves deep when it arrives on Galton's ideas and experiments in the field of genetics and hereditary traits.The reader will wonder why the book takes such great pains to explain Galton's outdated Victorian genetic theory.A quick perusal of the author's bio shows that he is a professor of genetics.
Sir Francis Galton does not have much name recognition today, but his name pops up in various books about the history of African exploration, statistics and genetics.He was one of a hand-full of renaissance type geniuses that Britain produced during the Victorian Age.They had wide ranging interests and consequently wide ranging discoveries.Galton is also credited with discovering the uniqueness of fingerprints to each individual.He began the modern type of data collection through scientific surveys and he correlated the results statistically.His improvements in the field of statistics are still used today.
There are not too many biographical books about Sir Francis Galton
This book may be a little too much forthecasual reader looking for some general information .The reader must be prepared to skim over the deeper sections.

Dense with detail - for committed Galton students only
This biography of Sir Francis Galton is clearly well-researched. The difficulty, however, is that while the author writes individual paragraphs in an interesting, descriptive style, the paragraphs themselves come one after another in confusing sequence, with so much detail that it is difficult to follow or focus on the main thread.

A much more readable Galton biography is the one published in 2004 by Martin Brookes, which obviously used the same primary sources and contains much of the same information (in some instances, almost word-for-word.)The Gillham book has the advantage of having visual representations of Galton's graphs, tables, etc., and contains a deeper level of scientific detail.If you are more interested in the life of the man, what made him tick, and his place in history, go with the Brookes version.

Note:Gillham's version has an extensive index; Brookes' version has none.

Less a biography than a history of a nova among stars
A comprehensive life of Sir Francis Galton busting with detail. Unfortunately more about what he did than about what he was or how he came to be. In the later parts he is hardly mentioned in page after page while the abstruse arguments of his disciples are rehashed ad nauseum. There is a "tinge" of calling Galton a racist and he's connected to Herrenstein's The Bell Curve -- which dates this book. In truth, Galton was an amazing and varied genius who created much of statistics and the idea of "intelligence." One can't help but notice the incredible group of connections between Galton and other Victorian intelligensiae such as JBS Haldane, J Clerk Maxwell, William Kingdon Clifford (whom some think is the model for H.G.Wells' "Time Traveler") and others. On balance, a qualified recommendation. Lots of notes and a remarkable subject. Yet, I would have liked more information on Galton's own mental processes. The story reinforces the idea that the Victorian age was really interesting and chock-o-block with interesting people. ... Read more

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The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Travel; Outdoor life; ... Read more

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Despite the increasing use of DNA evidence and other sophisticated forensic techniques in crime solving, fingerprints still serve as an indispensable tool of modern-day criminal investigation. This fascinating book, originally published in 1892, represents the first thorough investigation of this anatomical peculiarity and its application in establishing individual identity for use in law enforcement. Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin and a member of the Royal Geographical Society, had already made a reputation for himself as an explorer of Africa and the founder of the new field of eugenics when he turned his attention to the subject of fingerprints. Based upon extensive research at his "anthropometric laboratory," Galton lays out an elementary system of classifying fingerprints based on observed patterns of arches, loops, and whorls. Based on his own meticulous drawings as well as photographs of ink prints, he shows that "the numerous bifurcations, origins, islands, and enclosures in the ridges that compose the pattern, are proved to be almost beyond change." Thus, he established a sure method of individual identification.Galton’s system was later modified by Sir Edward R. Henry, who became chief of police in London. In 1901, Scotland Yard officially adopted the Galton-Henry system of fingerprinting. Today, it is the most widely used system of fingerprint classification in the world.This classic work will make a welcome addition to the libraries of historians, criminologists, and fans of true crime and forensic science. ... Read more

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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

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After some years had passed subsequent to the publication of this book in 1883, its publishers, Messrs. Macmillan, informed me that the demand for it just, but only just warranted a revised issue. I shrank from the great trouble of bringing it up to date because it, or rather many of my memoirs out of which it was built up, had become starting-points for elaborate investigations both in England and in America, to which it would be difficult and very laborious to do justice in a brief compass. So the question of a Second Edition was then entirely dropped. Since that time the book has by no means ceased to live, for it continues to be quoted from and sought for, but is obtainable only with difficulty, and at much more than its original cost, at sales of second-hand books. Moreover, it became the starting point of that recent movement in favour of National Eugenics (see note p. 24 in first edition) which is recognised by the University of London, and has its home in University College.

Having received a proposal to republish the book in its present convenient and inexpensive form, I gladly accepted it, having first sought and received an obliging assurance from Messrs. Macmillan that they would waive all their claims to the contrary in my favour.

The following small changes are made in this edition. The illustrations are for the most part reduced in size to suit the smaller form of the volume, the lettering of the composites is rearranged, and the coloured illustration is reproduced as closely as circumstances permit. Two chapters are omitted, on "Theocratic Intervention" and on the "Objective Efficacy of Prayer." The earlier part of the latter was too much abbreviated from the original memoir in the _Fortnightly Review_, 1872, and gives, as I now perceive, a somewhat inexact impression of its object, which was to investigate certain views then thought orthodox, but which are growing obsolete. I could not reinsert these omissions now with advantage, unless considerable additions were made to the references, thus giving more appearance of personal controversy to the memoirs than is desirable. After all, the omission of these two chapters, in which I find nothing to recant, improves, as I am told, the general balance of the book. FRANCIS GALTON.

Download Inquiries Into Human Faculty And Its Development Now! ... Read more

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If not for the work of his half cousin Francis Galton, Charles Darwin'sevolutionary theory might have met a somewhat different fate. In particular, with no directevidence of natural selection and no convincing theory of heredity to explain it, Darwin needed amathematical explanation of variability and heredity. Galton's work in biometry—the applicationof statistical methods to the biological sciences—laid the foundations for precisely that. This bookoffers readers a compelling portrait of Galton as the "father of biometry," tracing thedevelopment of his ideas and his accomplishments, and placing them in their scientific context.

Though Michael Bulmer introduces readers to the curious facts of Galton's life—as an explorer, asa polymath and member of the Victorian intellectual aristocracy, and as a proponent ofeugenics—his chief concern is with Galton's pioneering studies of heredity, in the course of whichhe invented the statistical tools of regression and correlation. Bulmer describes Galton's earlyambitions and experiments—his investigations of problems of evolutionary importance (such asthe evolution of gregariousness and the function of sex), and his movement from thedevelopment of a physiological theory to a purely statisticaltheory of heredity, based on theproperties of the normal distribution. This work, culminating in the law of ancestral heredity, alsoput Galton at the heart of the bitter conflict between the "ancestrians" and the "Mendelians" afterthe rediscovery of Mendelism in 1900. A graceful writer and an expert biometrician, Bulmerdetails the eventual triumph of biometrical methods in the history of quantitative genetics basedon Mendelian principles, which underpins our understanding of evolution today. ... Read more

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Originally published in 1907.This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

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This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The Art of Travel Indeed!
Galton was a highly experienced traveller, an amateur naturalist, explorer, geographer, and a student of the medicine of his times. All of these skills are evident in his travel books. Do you want to know how toorganize an expedition? make pemmican? fish without a line? use the starsas a guide? follow tracks at night? what to take (and use) for a multitudeof sickness and injuries on the trail? Although much of the descriptiondeals with situations in Africa, there is a wealth of information aboutwhat the gentleman explorer of the 19th century needed to know once he leftcharted or civilized lands.I love it. It is one of those books you readand re-read for the sheer pleasure of discovery. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Reason, published by Reason Foundation on July 1, 2005. The length of the article is 2070 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The first eugenicist: was Francis Galton wrong to want to improve the human race?(Extreme Measures: The Dark Visions and Bright Ideas of Francis Galton)(Book Review)
Author: Kenneth Silber
Publication: Reason (Magazine/Journal)
Date: July 1, 2005
Publisher: Reason Foundation
Volume: 37Issue: 3Page: 57(4)

Article Type: Book Review

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