Francis Galton, an English traveller and author, born at Dudderton, near Birmingham, in 1822. He studied medicine at Birmingham, and afterward at King's college, London, and graduated at Trinity college, Cambridge, in 1844. In 1846 he travelled in north Africa and on the White Nile, and subsequently made a journey of exploration from Walfish bay through the western regions of south Africa. For his account of this journey he received the gold medal of the royal geographical society in 1852, and subsequently became secretary and later vice president of that society. From 1863 to 1868 he was general secretary of the British association, and he is now (1874) one of the managing committee of the meteorological office. He has published Travels in Tropical South Africa" (1853);Meteoro<rraphica, or Methods of Mapping the Weather" (1863);

"Art of Travel, or Shifts and Contrivances available in Wild Countries" (1867); and Hereditary Genius, its Laws and Consequences" (1869). He has also edited "Vacation Tourists and Notes of Travel in 1860-'63 (3 vols., Cambridge, 1861-4).