48 MODES OF RESEARCH IN GENETICS 



importance of the thorough, searching study of 

 the individual, whether the matter under inves- 

 tigation be behavior, inheritance, variation, or 

 morphogenesis. It is no recommendation for a 

 new line of scientific inquiry to be supposed to 

 ignore or belittle this fact. 



A second misconception which prevails rather 

 widely is to the effect that biometric methods, 

 being supposedly entirely statistical in character, 

 necessarily require as a working postulate at the 

 outstart that the accumulation by selection of 

 small fluctuating variations is the primary and 

 fundamental, if not the sole method of organic 

 evolution. Such an idea is, of course, absurd. 

 The purpose of biometrical study so far as it is 

 applied to the evolution problem is precisely to 

 find out what has been the method of evolution. 

 Whatever the results of such inquiry may turn out 

 to be has no relation to either the validity or use- 

 fulness of biometric methods per se. The statisti- 

 cal methods or calculus developed by Pearson 

 are particularly adapted to the study of variation 

 of the continuous fluctuating type, but one who 

 uses this calculus is in no way compelled because 

 of this fact to take any particular position in re- 

 gard to the theoretical question of the biological 

 importance or significance of this kind of variation 

 in evolution. This is a matter to be settled by 

 direct experiment and observation. If, as many 

 biologists are coming to believe, this type of 



