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Hereditary Genius
307
being “eminently gifted.” In order to make a distinction between the
two grades, I add to the names of the men who belong to the higher
of them, the phrase “very excellent oarsman.”
It is not possible to do more than give a rough notion of the places
into which these four grades would respectively fall in my table (p.
34) of natural gifts. I have only two data to help me. The first is, that
I am informed that in the early part of 1868, the Tyne Amateur
Rowing Club, which is the most important institution of that kind in
the north of England, had been fifteen years in existence and had
comprised, in all, 377 members; that three of these, as judged by
amateur standards of comparison, had been considered of surpassing
excellence as skiff-rowers, and that the best of these three was
looked upon as equal to, or perhaps a trifle better than, the least good
of the brothers Matfin, who barely ranks as an “excellent” rower.
The other datum is the deliberate opinion of the authorities to whom
I am indebted for the materials of this chapter, that not 1 man in 10
will succeed as a rower even of the lower of the two grades whose
names are marked in my Appendix by brackets, and that not 1 in 100
rowers attains to excellence. Hence the minimum qualification for
excellence is possessed by only 1 man in 1, 000.
There is a rough accordance between these two data. A rowing
club consists in part of naturally selected men. They are not men, all
of whom have been taken at haphazard as regards their powers of
rowing. A large part are undoubtedly mere conscripts from the race
of clubable men, but there must always be a considerable number
who would not have joined the club save for their consciousness of
possessing gifts and tastes that specially qualified them for success
on the water. To be the best
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