Sent C.S. Myers to K. Pearson, 14th March 1902.
14 Mar 1902
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‘Dear Prof. Pearson,

You asked me to let you know if I should be in Egypt in March: in order that you might send me the paper on prehistoric Egyptian crania. I have just decided to leave this country on the 20th. So will you kindly keep by you my London address:-

62 Holland Park W.

I have made over 15,000 measurements this season, on over 1000 Egyptians & on some 200 Sudanese. When I return I shall have other work to finish before I can set to study this mass of data. I hope some day for a short chat with you on the most satisfactory way of putting my material into shape - ? for the Biometrika. I have some 200 photos of Egyptian and Sudanese, - but am now a little wearied of the business.

Yours sincerely,

C.S. Myers.’

[enclosed newspaper cutting: ‘Dr C.S. Myers read a paper on “The Variability of Modern and Ancient Peoples,” in which he remarked that it had been generally supposed that modern peoples deviated more widely than ancient peoples from their respective means. His investigations on the Egyptian fellahin, however, lent no support to this supposition... More evidence was urgently needed, but what little there was supported the contrary hypothesis that modern and ancient populations living under like conditions of country and climate differed little in variability. Professor Karl Pearson, on the other hand, supposing that a diminishing struggle for existence encouraged the persistence of individuals showing greater variability, believed that variability increased with increasing civilization. The opposite view, however, appeared tenable, that stringent selection encouraged greater variability... The more prosperous community tended towards homogeneity; in other words, to regression towards the mean.’]

Sent C.S. Myers to K. Pearson, 22nd Nov. 1901.
22 Nov 1901
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[from Cairo:]

‘Dear Professor Pearson,

In the monograph by Dr Lee on the capacity of skulls, which you kindly sent me, she refers to unpublished measurements by a Miss Fawcett on the Naqada crania. If you are concerned in the publication of the latter work, may I ask you to send me here a copy of the paper. I scarcely like to trouble you, & would not, - were I not very anxious to have by me all available material on Egyptian craniometry. Elliot Smith, Professor of Anatomy in the Medical School at Cairo, is also interesting himself in the matter. I go down three times weekly to his dissecting room & make measurements (including such as you & Prof. Windle require) on unclaimed bodies of hospital patients. By measuring these the same lengths as I have chosen to take on the living, & by repeating the measurements on the dried skeletons prepared from these corpses, I hope to obtain 80[?] results which will enable me to compare with the ancient Egyptian bones, the proportion of links[?] among the present population. I measure about twenty soldiers a day and have already done about 200 subjects. My dissecting-room work is especially promising as at present the Professor is engaged in macerating a number of bodies in order to prepare skeletons therefrom.

I hope you will not mind my troubling you to send me a copy of Miss Fawcett’s paper if you are arranging for its publication in the near future. This address will find me for the next three or four months.

Yours very truly,

Charles S. Myers.’

Sent C.S. Myers to K. Pearson, 8th Aug. 1901.
8 Aug 1914
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‘Dear Sir,

 

I think it very kind of you to have replied to my letter at such length and so interestingly. I will gladly do all I can to elucidate the special points which bear upon your work. I fear, however, that the conditions, under which my measurements will be made, will exclude me from taking the great number of observations which for many points you require.

The Sultan, if I remember rightly, told me that there were not more than 2000 Egyptians in the Khedive’s army. The only other way of getting material is to measure the natives digging at an exploration-site or to accompany the recruiting-commission when it goes to various villages along the Nile-valley.

I do not know how far these last two methods of anthropometry may afford me the opportunities. I have, therefore, determined to make a series of notes, measurements, & photographs of Egyptian soldiers in greater detail than you appear to consider likely. The max. head-length head-height and auricular height are included in my list. Stature, facial, nasal, orbital, and limit[?] measurements are also in this scheme, also eye, skin and hair-colour; I shall of course note birthplace of subject, & of his parents & also religion. I will do my best to find out, if I can, the relationship between privates of the same villages. It occurs to me that the anthropometry undertaken by the Egyptian Education Department would in this respect be of more likely service. A friend of mine, named Coupland, has measured a great number of pupils in a Cairo school, and noted the increase of their head-measurements (and visual acuity!) from year to year. If you can, when next I see him I will ask him to communicate with you.

You appear to infer that I shall have thirty or forty assistants in my work. Possibly, I may get a servant or clerk from the War Office; but otherwise I know of no one else to help you. I am trying in two different directions to obtain a man to go out & work with me. But such people are rare; and, although I may be able to find sufficient reliable helpers in Cairo, the probability is a small one.

I have one of your head-spanners, also a very superior form of Flower’s callipers invented by [Henry?] Gray. To your head spanner, at my suggestion, Mr. [Horace] Darwin has fixed a graduated circle with swinging index, so that (if the head be kept in a given position) the angle which the auriculo-nasal, auriculo-alveolar and auriculo mental lines make with the vertical can be recorded. I propose rapidly estimating these angles after determining the lengths of the radii by your spanner. With these lengths & their respective angles with the vertical known, the nasion, alveolar point, & chin could be plotted after the fashion of polar co-ordinates.

I am interesting [sic] in limit-measurements particularly as, in a paper to be read by me at the Glasgow meeting of the British Assocn., I shall show how the proportions of the long bones of King Hen Khet [sic] (of the IIIrd dynasty!), relate[?] to one another & to the probable stature, approximate far more nearly to those of Negroid than to those of European skeletons [see C.S. Myers, ‘The Bones of Hen Nekht...’, Man 1 (1901), pp. 152-153].

I should like to read the two papers you offer kindly to send me on the Naqada statures and on the capacity-estimation. My address from mid-September until the middle of October will be

62 Holland Park

London W.

I shall not forget your offer to publish my work, of it prove interesting enough. I hope that your new journal may meet with deserving success.

Yours faithfully,

C.S. Myers.’