Abstract
IN a recent communication1, Prof. R. A. Fisher and Dr. Janet Vaughan showed that a significant racial difference in blood-group frequencies could be detected in a sample of Liverpool donors by comparing with the whole group those possessing characteristically Welsh family names. This has prompted me to make a similar comparison for intelligence, as estimated by a mental test, in the case of a practically complete sample of school-children living in the city of Bath. The results may be of interest in view of the scarcity of observations made under conditions likely to ensure a fair comparison of racial groups. Furthermore, it has sometimes been suggested that Welsh immigrants in English cities tend to be of lower average intelligence and greater fertility than the native populations; in this connexion see, for example, Cattell2.
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References
NATURE, 144, 1047 (1939).
Cattell, “Psychology and Social Progress”, pp. 53, 96, 99, 102, 125–26 (1933).
Roberts, Norman and Griffiths, Ann. Eugenics, 8 (1938).
Bramwell, Eugenics Rev., 15 (1923–24).
Daniel, Sociol. Rev., 31 (1939).
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ROBERTS, J. Surnames, Intelligence and Fertility. Nature 145, 939 (1940). https://doi.org/10.1038/145939a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/145939a0
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