December 14, 191 1] 



NATURE 



21 1 



developed in the absence of these influences, and the term 

 " inheritable " to characters which were present in the 

 parent and tend to be " inborn " in the offspring. Thus 

 they speak of heads as inborn and inheritable, and of use- 

 callosities and scars as acquired and non-inheritable. I am 

 not concerned here with the correctness of these terms. 

 ^Iy statement of the manner in which they are used is 

 orrect. 



Prof. Karl Pearson employs the term " inherit," but not, 

 to my knowledge, the terms " inborn " and " acquired." 

 Instead, he uses " bred " and " created," which apparently 

 are intended to mean the same. He has not, I believe, 

 defined any of his terms Presumably, therefore, he uses 

 them with their ordinary meanings. If he does not, then 

 not only have I been mistaken, but also almost everyone 

 else, including such a careful thinker as Sir Ray Lankester. 

 In that case, what is the meaning of the expression " bred, 

 not created"? Is potentiality meant here? The italics 

 are mine. 



Even in the absence of statistical inquiry, it is a common 

 conviction that individuals tend to resemble their pro- 

 genitors mentally as well as physically. Thus the offspring 

 of a vertebrate is another vertebrate, of a man another 

 man, of a Hottentot another Hottentot, and so on. But 

 individual characters are less certainly inherited than 

 varietal characters, varietal characters than specific 

 characters, and so on. Prof. Pearson's work concerns only 

 individual characters {i.e. variations) ; but he makes — not 

 once but repeatedly, not only in scientific memoirs but also 

 in popular lectures and letters to newspapers — the un- 

 qualified statement that the mental and physical characters 

 of man are inherited at the same rate. It seems that this 

 rate is "somewhere about 0-46 to 0-50." His estimate, if 

 it led nowhere, would have no more importance than, for 

 example, a calculation concerning the average length of 

 noses. But it leads him somewhere — to the notion that the 

 moral and intellectual qualities are " bred, not created," 

 instead of to the notion that they are bred ani created. It 

 leads him to a false opposition between " nature " and 

 " nurture," instead of to the really quite obvious truth that 

 the nature of man, the educable animal, is such that he is 

 supremely responsive to nurture. It leads him to the 

 notion that the poorer classes in England are, on the 

 average, by nature inferior to their more fortunate com- 

 patriots, and thence to dire predictions concerning our 

 ifuture as a nation and to demands that something shall 

 be done. It would lead him, I suppose, to the notion that 

 an English baby, reared by African cannibals, would, when 

 grown, resemble his progenitors and differ from his 

 educators as much mentally as physically. And so on and 

 so forth. No one, I suppose, disputes that individuals 

 vary in capacity. The dispute, in the case of the moral 

 and intellectual traits, is entirely as to whether capacity 

 can become more than mere potentiality unless nurture plays 

 its part as the other blade of the scissors. In other words, 

 the dispute is as to whether these traits are or are not 

 acquirements, that is, products of man's educability plus 

 his individual experience. 



The biometric plan of ascertaining correlations between 

 variations, and thence surmising a causal connection, is 

 not, as is commonly supposed, a new instrument in the 

 hands of men of science. It is merely a variant of the 

 very old method of concomitant variations which is 

 described in almost every book on logic and in almost every 

 work on the methods of science. There is, however, this 

 difference : according to the method of correlated variations 

 as exemplified by biometricians, if two things vary together 

 on the average, there is invariably a causal connection 

 between them ; according to the method of concomitant 

 variations as described by logicians, if two things invariably 

 var\' together, there is probably a causal connection. 



In my letter I stated that Dr. W'alker had reproduced 

 somf^ of my opinions in his book almost in my own words. 

 I should have added that he made very full acknowledg- 

 ment. G. Archdall Reid. 



Southsea, December 10 



parents' tempers, our parents' consciousness," S:c. ; this 

 should read : " We inherit our parents' tempers, our 

 parents' conscientiousness," &c. (see Journal Royal Anth. 

 Inst., vol. xxxiii., p. 204). E. Lawrence. 



" Kama," Sunningdale Avenue, Westcliff-on-Sea, 

 December 11. 



Temperature of the Upper Atmosphere. 



Messrs. Gold and Harwood in their paper on the pre- 

 sent state of our knowledge of the upper atmosphere, 

 printed in the British Association's reports for 1909, give 

 a table showing the mean temperatures for the months of 

 the year at heights varying from the surface to 15 kilo- 

 metres. With regard to it they say the principal feature 

 is the very marked minimum in March and the small, 

 though less marked, effect in September. The table is 

 based upon about 5800 readings taken at Strassburg during 

 five years. With the aid of this table I have plotted on 

 the accompanying diagram the temperatures at various 



In Dr. C. Walker's quotations (Nature, November 23 

 iiid December 7) from Dr. A. Reid's paoer. Prof. Karl 

 Pearson is represented as saying : " We inherit our 



NO. 2198, VOL. 88] 



/J J F M A N J J A S N D 



Fig. I.— Temperature variations throughout the year at 

 different heights. 



heights (isotherms). Plotted in this manner, a result is 

 obtained which shows clearly that a check in the fall of 

 temperature takes place between September and October. 

 The principal feature, however, is the rise of temperature 

 between December and February, and the small gradient 

 of temperature below 2000 metres during those months. 



The tracing of the isotherms in the advective layei; pre- 

 sents some difficulties, owing to the abnormal conditions 

 prevailing in it. It would appear that during December 

 a low temperature condition prevails, and appears to die 

 away from the top downwards, disappearing at a height 

 of about 12,000 metres in February. In March there is a 

 marked inversion of temperature between 12,000 and 15,000 

 metres which dtx-s not seem to continue into April. 



