Heights and Weights

Tables of the relation between height and weight are now common in many countries, and if reasonably used are certainly helpful. It is not that a youth, a man, or woman, of a certain height must closely conform to the weight tabulated, a margin of 15 or 20 per cent, on either side is allowable. Such a table is undoubtedly useful in comparing the recruits or the prisoners it may be of one year (say after a famine) with those of previous years. The table lays down a standard, and the men examined in any one year may be above or below it in a greater or less degree than in another year. Such a fact is certain, and may be of very considerable importance. The first table for such physical equivalents in use, or rather published in India, was one published in these columns in 1897 by Sir Walter (then Captain W. J.) Buchanan and now known