Memories of my life / by Francis Galton.

  • Galton, Francis, 1822-1911.
Date:
[1908]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Memories of my life / by Francis Galton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    i8 MEMORIES OF MY LIFE side of the little river Liane, that feeds the harbour, at which one of our schoolfellows, a gaunt, dyspeptic- looking boy, performed the following feat to our terror and admiration, as we crowded round him to see it. He took a frog by its hind feet, opened his wide mouth and dropped the frog's fore-feet on his tongue. The frog struggled to get free, and at the critical moment the hind legs were let go, and down went the frog, head foremost, into his gullet. He was our hero for the time ; none other dared to attempt the same feat. He said that he felt the frog all the way as it went down to his stomach, and in it. The school was hateful to me in many ways, and lovable in none, so I was heartily glad to be taken away from it in 1832. I thence returned to my family party, who were newly settled in Leamington. It then consisted of my father, mother, and three sisters ; my brothers were away, and my other sister, Lucy, who had married, was living near Birmingham. My grandfather Galton had recently died, and the consequent large accession to my fathers income justified his change of residence, whch gave him and my sisters a wider social intercourse than they had at the Larches. Leamington was at that time a little place, attractive to many eminent invalids, who drank the waters and consulted Dr. Jephson, then becoming celebrated. I was next sent to a small private school at Kenilworth, consisting of some half-dozen pupils, where I received much kindness, and breathed the air of unconstraint during three happy years. It was kept by Mr. Attwood, the clergyman of the parish (a near relative of the inventor of Attwood's