Principles of Heredity 107 



by Professor Weldon as conflicting facts and lastly to 

 suggest a few simple terms without which (or some equi- 

 valents) the discussion of such phenomena is difficult. 

 Though it is impossible here to give an outline of facts and 

 reasoning there set out at length, 1 feel that his article 

 needs an immediate reply. Professor Weldon is credited 

 with exceptional familiarity with these topics, and his paper 

 is likely to be accepted as a sufficient statement of the case. 

 Its value will only be known to those who have either 

 worked in these fields themselves or have been at the 

 trouble of thoughtfully studying the original materials. 



The nature of Professor Weldon' s article may be most 

 readily indicated if I quote the summary of it issued in a 

 paper of abstracts sent out with Review copies of the Part. 

 This paper was most courteously sent to me by an editor 

 of Biometrika in order to call my attention to the article 

 on Mendel, a subject in which he knew me to be interested. 

 The abstract is as follows. 



"Few subjects have excited so much interest in the last 

 year or two as the laws of inheritance in hybrids. Professor 

 W. F. R. Weldon describes the results obtained by Mendel by 

 crossing races of Peas which differed in one or more of seven 

 characters. From a study of the work of other observers, and 

 from examination of the 'Telephone' group of hybrids, the 

 conclusion is drawn that Mendel's results do not justify any 

 general statement concerning inheritance in cross-bred Peas. A 

 few striking cases of other cross-bred plants and animals are 

 quoted to show that the results of crossing cannot, as Mendel 

 and his followers suggest, be predicted from a knowledge of the 

 characters of the two parents crossed without knowledge of the 

 more remote ancestry." 



Such is the judgment a fellow-student passes on this 

 mind 



" Voyaging through strange seas of thought alone" 



