340 Life and Letters of Francis Galton 



(b) The Darwin- Wallace Celebration of the Linnean Society 

 of London, 1st July, 1908. 



Two things remain impressed on the biographer's mind as memories of that 

 day. I first felt the strong need Francis Galton had for a supporting arm. 

 By the time the medals had been distributed, and the recipients* had spoken, 

 the fatigue had so tried Galton that he had to leave the meeting. I saw that 

 he rose with difficulty, and leaving my seat also, saw him home. He had 

 spoken well, but the exertion and the closeness of the day had severely taxed 

 him. 



The other memory is also a sad one; we had met to do honour to a great 

 English leader of scientific thought, one whom I take it we all respected, 

 and to whom many of us felt we owed a deep debt of gratitude ; he had given 

 us, as Galton said, a keen sense of intellectual freedom. It was, as it were, 

 a memorial service of thanksgiving, which all men of science could join in 

 together, irrespective of divergence of scientific creeds. Some wag on the 

 Linnean Executive had placed William Bateson in the chair adjacent to mine. 

 I awaited his coming with expectation, determined that our greeting should 

 disappoint the wag. But Bateson refused it, sat sideways on his chair, with 

 his back to me, the whole of the medal distribution, and no doubt the wag was 

 amused by what was simply pain to me — pain, that a distinguished biologist 

 should refuse to join harmoniously with a biometrician, however despised, in a 

 common service of reverence to one so immeasurably greater than either of us. 



Dr Dukinfield H. Scott, the President, addressing Galton, spoke as followsf : 



" Evolution, as understood by Darwin and Wallace, depends upon three factors, Heredity, 

 Variation and Natural Selection. In the study of the first of these factors, Heredity, the work 

 of the present day is characterised by the application of exact methods, whether on biometrical 

 or Mendelian lines. It was you, Dr Galton, who first showed the way by which exact measure- 

 ment could be applied to the problems of evolution and heredity, and indicated that their laws 

 must be susceptible of proof. You have pointed out a new method, and the possibility of a 

 more logical treatment of evolutionary questions. By establishing such principles as that of 

 'Regression to Mediocrity' you have added new laws to evolution, and under the name of 

 ' Cessation of Selection ' you have suggested an explanation of degeneration following disuse, 

 anticipating that afterwards independently proposed and elaborated by Weismann|, and called 

 by him Panmixia. 



"The ingenuity of your methods, your energy and enthusiasm in applying them, and your 

 constant interest in the work of others, and readiness to help them, have made you a great 



* Alfred Russel Wallace, Sir Joseph D. Hooker, Ernst Haeckel, August Weismann, 

 E. Strasburger, Francis Galton and E. Ray Lankester, all of whom but Haeckel and Weismann 

 were then present ; the last remaining leader, Lankester, died just ten days before I wrote 

 these lines. 



t The Darwin- Wallace Celebration, held on Thursday, 1st July, 1908, by the Linnean Society 

 of London, London, published by the Society, 1908. The work contains admirable portraits 

 of Darwin and of the medallists, pp. 24-26. 



| I think it desirable to publish the following letter from August Weismann. It admits 

 the priority of Francis Galton in the main idea involved in the continuity of the germ-plasm. 



Francis Galton, Esq., London. Freiburg i. Br. 23 Febr. 1889. 



Sir, You had the kindness to send to me your new book " Natural Inheritance " and a whole series of 

 smaller papers you published before on the same subject. 1 thank you very much for your kindness and I am 

 indeed very glad to have now all your memoirs at once at hand for consulting them. Till now I did not know 

 all of them, but some ones, for instance " A Theory of Heredity " from 1875. It was Mr Herdman of Liverpool 



