Signed letter from London Institution and first edition frontis of Francis Galton's 1869 book \Hereditary Genius\". Galton was very influenced by his cousin Charles Darwin's book \"The Origin of Species\" 1859. He was inspired to look at human variation, from intelligence to fingerprints. His first interest was whether human 'genius' was heritable. He tested this by seeing if certain families produced more eminent men than others, while later trying to control for environment and nurture. This book reports his early findings that 'eminence' decreases with decreasing relatedness to a 'Genius'. He would conclude that state intervention in reproduction is required to maintain human intellectual potential. This gave impetus to the Eugenics movement."