GALTON 251 GALVANISM 1779. He was educated in Greenock, and was then placed in the custom house. He remained there till 1804, when he went to London, with an epic poem on the battle of the Largs. After a few years his health began to fail, and he was obliged to seek relief in a more genial climate. At Gibraltar he made the acquaintance of Lord Byron and his friend Hobhouse, and the three travelers became f ellow- voyagers ; but soon after Gait separated from his new friends to visit Sicily, then Malta, and finally Greece, where he again renewed his ac- quaintance with Byron. On his return he published with considerable success "Letters from the Levant"; "The Ayr- shire Legatees" (1820) ; "The Annals of the Parish" (1821), his masterpiece; "Sir Andrew Wylie" (1822) ; "The Pro- vost" (1822); "The Entail" (1823). He was now busily engaged in the formation of the Canada Company. He went to Canada in 1826, but three years later re- turned to England a ruined man, and at once recommenced his literary labors. His first novel was "Lawrie Todd" (1830), which was followed by "Southen- nan," and a "Life of Lord Byron." In 1834 he published his "Literary Life and Miscellanies." He returned to Scotland, and died in Greenock, April 11, 1839. GALTON, FRANCIS, an English scientist; grandson of Dr. Erasmus Dar- win, and cousin of Charles Darwin; bom at Birmingham, England, in 1822. He was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham; studied medicine at the Birmingham Hospital and King's Col- lege, London* and graduated from Trin- ity College, Cambridge, in 1844. Having in 1846 traveled in north Africa, he explored in 1850 lands hitherto unknown in south Africa, publishing his experi- ences in his "Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa," which ob- tained the gold medal of the Royal Geo- graphical Society, and in Art of Travel," which passed through five editions between 1855 and 1872. His investigations in meteorology are re- corded in "Meteorographica," published in 1863. A member of a Meteoro- logical Committee of the Board of Trade, he was appointed one of the committee intrusted with the parliamentary grant for the Meteorological Office. Later he specially devoted himself to the problem of heredity, publishing "Hereditary Genius; Its Laws and Consequences" (1869) ; "Expei-iments in Pangenesis" (1871); "Natural Inheritance" (1889); "Finger Prints" (1893) ; "Fingerprint Directory" "Noteworthv Families" (1906), "Memoirs of My^ Life" (1908), •'Essays in Eugenics" (1909). He was general secretary of the British Associa- tion in 1863-1868; president of the An- thropological Sections in 1877 and 1885; president of the Anthropological Insti- tute in 1885-1886. He died in 1911. GALVANI, LUIGI (g«al-va'ne), an Italian anatomist; born in Bologna, Italy, Sept. 9, 1737. He studied theology and subsequently medicine at the university there, and in 1762 was elected Professor of Anatomy. Galvani owes the wide celebrity attached to his name to his dis- coveries in animal electricity. He pub- lished his "Commentary on the Electrical Forces in Muscular Motion" in 1791. Most of his writings were published in a quarto edition in 1841-1842 by the Acad- emy of Sciences of his native city. He died in Bologna, Dec. 4, 1798. His statue was erected there in 1879. GALVANISM, the branch of electric science to which an experiment by Gal- vani gave birth. His wife, who was mak- ing soup from frogs, happened to put them, after being skinned, in proximity to a charged electrical machine belonging to her husband. On touching them with a scalpel their legs became gi*eatly con- vulsed. From this Galvani came to the erroneous conclusion that animal electric- ity existed in the nerves and muscles of GALVANOMETER frogs, etc. In this explanation Galvani ignored the metallic connecting wire. His contemporary, Volta, gave attention to this, and found that the contraction of the limbs is more energetic when the con-
