4o6 



NATURE 



[August 25, 1904 



investigation. There are undoubtedly too many observations 

 and too little serious discussion of observations. The time 

 has arrived when investigation should go hand in hand with 

 accurate observation, and should direct and suggest the work 

 of observation, and also that the sciences directly related 

 to meteorology should be considered concurrently with it. 

 There are undoubtedly definite relations between certain 

 classes of solar phenomena and phenomena of terrestrial 

 magnetism. The probability of definite relations between 

 solar and terrestrial meteorological phenomena is also 

 generally admitted. 



Data for the determination of these relations are being 

 rapidly accumulated, and numerous problems connected 

 therewith are waiting and ripe for investigation. They are 

 too large and complex to be undertaken by present English 

 methods, and can only be attacked by a body of trained 

 investigators under arrangements securing the continuity of 

 method and thought requisite for the prolonged systematic 

 inquiry gradually leading up to their complete solution. 



It would hence be desirable to enlarge the scope of the 

 central institution I have suggested, so as to include in its 

 field of labour the investigation of the relation between solar 

 and terrestrial meteorology and magnetism, so far as they 

 can be solved by the comparison of the observations of the 

 British Empire. 



The central institution would thus have large and definite 

 fields of work and most interesting problems for investi- 

 gation. It would hence contribute towards the formation 

 of a body of scientific meteorological investigators adequate 

 to the importance and wants of the empire, and be of the 

 highest educational as well as scientific value. 



My predecessor in this position. Dr. Shaw, the head of 

 the English Meteorological Office, made some remarks in 

 his .Address last year which deserve repetition in connection 

 with this idea. He said : " The British Empire stands to 

 gain more by scientific Icnowledge, and to lose more bv 

 unscientific knowledge, of the matter than any other country. 

 It should from its position be the most important agency 

 for promoting the advance of meteorological science, in the 

 first place because it possesses such admirable varying fields 

 of observation, and in the second place because with due 

 encouragement British intellect may achieve as fruitful 

 results in this as in other fields of investigatiorf. " 



The establishment of the central institution as suggested 

 above would provide a remedy for the defects pointed out 

 by Dr. Shaw. The reorganisation of the English Meteor- 

 ological Office is, I believe, under consideration. Is it too 

 much to hope that a strong expression of opinion on the part 

 of the British Association, and the influence of the learned 

 University at which its present meeting is held, would 

 induce the English Government to spend an additional 5000?. 

 or 10,000/. annually for the promotion of meteorological in- 

 vestigation and the establishment of a central imperial 

 institution in London in connection with its Meteorological 

 Office ? 



SECTION D. 



ZOOLOGY. 



Opening .Address by William Bateson, M.A., E.R.S., 

 President of the Section. 

 In choosing a subject for this address I have availed myself 

 of the kindly usage which permits a sectional president to 

 divert the attention of his hearers into those lines of inquiry 

 which he himself is accustomed to pursue. Nevertheless, 

 in taking the facts of breeding for my theme, I am sensible 

 that this privilege is subjected to a certain strain. 



Heredity — and variation too — are matters of which no 

 naturalist likes to admit himself entirelv careless. Every- 

 one knows that, somewhere hidden among the phenomena 

 denoted by these terms, there must be principles which, in 

 ways untraced, are ordering the destinies of living things. 

 Experiments in heredity have thus, as I am told, auniversal 

 fascination. All are willing to offer an outward deference 

 to these studies. The limits of that homage, however, are 

 soon reached, and, though all profess interest, few are im- 

 pelled to make even the moderate mental effort needed to 

 apprehend what has been already done. It is understood 

 that heredity is an important mysterv, and variation another 

 mystery. The naturalist, the breeder, the horticulturist, the 



NO. 181 7, VOL. 70] 



sociologist, man of science and man of practice alike, has 

 daily occasion to make and to act on assumptions as to 

 heredity and variation, but many seem well content that 

 such phenomena should remain for ever mysterious. 



The position of these studies is unique. At once fashion- 

 able and neglected, nominally the central common ground 

 of botany and zoology, of morphology and physiology, 

 belonging specially to neither, this area is thinly tenanted. 

 Now, since few have leisure for topics with which they 

 cannot suppose themselves concerned, I am aware that, 

 when I ask you in your familiar habitations to listen to 

 tales of a no man's land, I must forego many of those sup- 

 ports by which a speaker may maintain his hold on the 

 intellectual sympathy of an audience. 



Those whose pursuits have led them far froi^p their com- 

 panions cannot be exempt from that differentiation which is 

 the fate of isolated groups. The stock of common know- 

 ledge and common ideas grows smaller until the difficulty 

 of inter-communication becomes extreme. Not only has our 

 point of view changed, but our materials are unfamiliar, 

 our methods of inquiry new, and even the results attained 

 accord little with the common expectations of the day. In 

 the progress of sciences we are used to be led from the 

 known to the unknown, from the half-perceived to the 

 proven, the expectation of one year becoming the certainty 

 of the next. It will aid appreciation of the change coming 

 over evolutionary science if it be realised that the new know- 

 ledge of heredity and variation rather replaces than extends 

 current ideas on those subjects. 



Convention requires that a president should declare all 

 well in his science ; but I cannot think it a symptom in- 

 dicative of much health in our body that the task of assimil- 

 ating the new knowledge has proved so difficult. An 

 eminent foreign professor lately told me that he believed 

 there were not half a dozen in his country conversant with 

 what may be called Mendelism, though he added hopefully, 

 " I find these things interest my students more than my 

 colleagues." A professed biologist cannot afford to ignore 

 a new life-history, the Okapi, or the other last new version 

 of the old story ; but phenomena which put new interpret- 

 ations on the whole, facts witnessed continually by all who 

 are working in these fields, he may conveniently disregard 

 as matters of opinion. Had a discovery comparable in 

 magnitude with that of Mendel been announced in physics 

 or in chemistry, it would at once have been repeated and 

 extended in every great scientific school throughout the 

 world. We could come to a British .Association audience to 

 discuss the details of our subject — the polymorphism of 

 extracted types, the physiological meaning of segregation, 

 its applicability to the case of sex, the nature of non-segreg- 

 able characters, and like problems with which we are now 

 dealing — sure of finding sound and helpful criticism ; nor 

 would it be necessary on each occasion to begin with a 

 popular presentation of the rudiments. This state of things 

 in a progressive science has arisen, as I think, from a loss 

 of touch with the main line of inquiry. The successes of 

 descriptive zoology are so palpable and so attractive, that, 

 not unnaturally, these which are the means of progress have 

 been mistaken for the end. But now that the survey of 

 terrestrial types by existing methods is happily approaching 

 completion, we may hope that our science will return to 

 its proper task, the detection of the fundamental nature of 

 living things. I say return, because, in spite of that per- 

 fecting of the instruments of research characteristic of our 

 time, and an extension of the area of scrutiny, the last 

 generation was nearer the main quest. No one can study 

 the history of biology without perceiving that in some 

 essential respects the spirit of the naturalists of fifty years 

 ago was truer in aim, and that their methods of inquiry 

 were more direct and more fertile — so far, at least, as the 

 problem of evolution is concerned — than those which have 

 replaced them. 



If we study the researches begun by Kolreuter and con- 

 tinued with great vigour until the middle of the sixties, 

 we cannot fail to see that had the experiments he and his 

 successors undertook been continued on the same lines, we 

 should by now have advanced far into the unknown. More 

 than this : if a knowledge of what those men actually 

 accomplished had not passed awav from the memory of our 

 generation, we should now be able to appeal to an informed 

 public mind, having some practical acquaintance with the 



