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Anthropometric Registers
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the time occupied is so brief, when the necessary preparations have been
made and the sitters are ready at hand, that a practice of methodically
photographing schoolboys and members of other large institutions might
easily be established. I, for one, should dearly prize the opportunity of
visiting the places where I have been educated, and of turning over pages
showing myself and my companions as we were in those days. But no
such records exist; the institutions last and flourish, the individuals who
pass through them are dispersed and leave few or no memorials behind. It
seems a cruel waste of opportunity not to make and keep these brief
personal records in a methodical manner. The fading of ordinary
photographic prints is no real objection to keeping a register, because they
can now be reproduced at small charge in permanent printers ink, by the
autotype and other processes.
I have seen with admiration, and have had an opportunity of availing
myself of, the newly-established library of well-ordered folios at the
Admiralty, each containing a thousand pages, and each page containing a
brief summary of references to the life of a particular seaman. There are
already 80,000 pages, and owing to the excellent organisation of the office
it is a matter of perfect ease to follow out any one of these references, and
to learn every detail of the service of any seaman. A brief register of
measurements and events in the histories of a large number of persons,
previous to their entering any institution and during their residence in it,
need not therefore be a difficult matter to those who may take it in hand
seriously and methodically.
The recommendation I would venture to make to my readers is to
obtain photographs and ordinary measurements periodically of themselves
and their children, making it a family custom to do so, because, unless
driven by some custom, the act will be postponed until the opportunity is
lost. Let those periodical photographs be full and side views of the face on
an adequate scale, adding any others that may be wished, but not omitting
these. As the portraits accumulate have collections of them autotyped.
Keep the prints methodically in a family register, writing by their side
careful chronicles of illness and all such events as used to find a place on
the fly-leaf of the Bible of former generations,
