UNNECESSARY ANTAGONISMS xliii 



In order, if possible, to diminish any such injurious 

 effect, however transient, I propose to direct attention to 

 the reason given by Bateson for dissatisfaction with 

 Embryology as an aid in studying the problem of Species 

 — the reason which he places in the forefront, very clearly 

 stating it in the preface to his work, On Variation. He 

 tells us that after working at the anatomy and develop- 

 ment of Balanoglossus, he attempted to show the bearing 

 of the facts upon questions of relationship and descent — 

 involving in this case the ancestry of the Vertebrates. 

 He was dissatisfied with the uncertainty which must, in 

 the present state of our knowledge, attend an attempt to 

 solve about the most obscure and difficult problem in the 

 whole realm of zoology. A few of the main facts con- 

 cerning the past history of the Vertebrates are given on 

 pp. 26, 30 and 31 of the present volume. It will there be 

 seen that the stupendous problem to which the Embryo- 

 logy of a living organism could not give a decisive answer, 

 was nothing less than the reconstruction of a particular 

 episode in the course of evolutionary history at the period 

 when the oldest fossiliferous rocks were laid down, or 

 probably very much earlier. For this reason the study 

 of Embryology was to be discouraged, and Variation 

 proclaimed as our only hope, although not one particle 

 of evidence was broug^ht forward to show that Varia- 

 tion could tell us even as much as Embryology about 

 the ancestry of the Vertebrates in Cambrian or pre- 

 Cambrian times. 



Bateson does not hesitate to compare his opponents to 

 Procrustes.^ But there is a method beside which the 

 Procrustean is commonplace. Instead of making the 

 observations fit the hypothesis, a more original method 

 is to discourage the study by which awkward facts are 



^ Report British Association^ i904) P- 578. 



