Sent from Franz Uri Boas
14 Apr 1897
Description:

‘Dear Sir,

I have to apologise for not having written to you before this, but my engagements during the past year were such that I had no time at all to devote to subjects of statistics. I have been very anxious to send you the material to which I referred in the summer of 1895, but my cards have been quite inaccessible, and I have not been able to do so. I am sending you now, through the Smithsonian Institution, a package of cards which you may find of value. I beg to ask you to make whatever use you can of the material, and kindly return it to me when you have finished with it. Perhaps the simplest way might be if you will have a copy made of the material on teh cards and return the originals to me.

...

I have studied your third contribution to the theory of evolution with very great interest. It strikes me that the methods which you outline in that paper are of the most fundamental importance for the theory of what I might term “biometry.” For a long time I have been of the opinion that our whole system of anthropometry needs a very thorough revision; and the application of your formulas to a number of problems have corroborated my former view. I hope you will continue these important studies, which are certainly doing more to place the theory of evolution on a firm basis than any thing else I know of.

I am sending you a brief paper in which, rather reluctantly, I have not applied the method of correlation indicated by you. My reason for not doing so has been that in the present form the subject will be more readily intelligible, and I am rather anxious to convince my friends here of the futility of investigations based on the method of percentile grades.

I expect to spend the coming summer on the Pacific coast of this continent, studying the ethnology of certain Indian tribes. I am somewhat in hopes of taking up my anthropometric work more vigorously next winter.

I am, dear Sir,

Yours very truly,

Franz Boas.’