Francis Galton was one of those Victorian polymaths - gifted amateurs in scientific and technical fields - who were such a feature of the times. Members of learned societies, they were wealthy, leisured, intensely curious about the world surrounding them and of natural phenomena of all kinds. They followed their own bent and were virtually independent of laboratories; they dominated the learned world which was centred in London in the reseach organizations of which The Royal Society was the chief. Galton designed the weather maps which were first printed in The Times on April 1st, 1875; he established the importance of fingerprints as a means of identification; he participated enthusiastically in the affairs of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (he saw their yearly meetings as the modern equivalent of the Canterbury Pilgrims).