25' 



XATCRE 



[December 30, 1909 



and mental characters in man, it was necessary to 

 free tlieir minds from common error that the predo- 

 minant determining factor is environment. His 

 method of attempting- to do this is vigorous assertion, 

 unsupported by any direct evidence. That improved 

 bodilv conditions and suitable education can effect a 

 great improvement in even the least promising human 

 material is a belief widely and probably correctly held ; 

 vet Mr. Mudge tries to shake it by arguments such as 

 the following : — " From the fertilised ovum of a fish 

 there is developed a fish, not a bird. Transference of 

 the bird to water, or the fish to the skies, will not 

 convert the one to the other." He complains of others 

 " setting up a dogma that rushes in where biological 

 philosophy fears to tread," but his own biological 

 philosophy is none too diffident, and indeed bears a 

 striking resemblance to dogma. His failure to pro- 

 duce direct evidence as to the relative effects of heredity 

 and environment in man is no doubt due to the fact 

 that very little evidence is available, but this should 

 be frankly acknowledged. 



Mr. Mudge then goes on to describe very fully and 

 clearlv a simple case of Mendelian inheritance in 

 rabbits, and mentions certain phenomena of inherit- 

 ance in man which are explicable on a Mendelian 

 hypothesis. He concludes with what is in effect a 

 plea for eugenics, which for him seems to follow as 

 a corollary to Mendelism. To us it appears that he 

 would be more likely to win proselytes if he had rested 

 his case on the broader basis of the generally admitted 

 facts of human inheritance. For although in certain 

 cases these may bear a Mendelian interpretation, it 

 cannot be argued that Mendel's laws have been demon- 

 strated at all widely for man ; and it is certain that 

 thev have not been demonstrated for any of the char- 

 acters which constitute civic worth. 



Two other papers read to the Mendel Society are 

 included in the journal, namely, J. T. Cunningham, 

 "The Evolution of Man," and C. C. Hurst, "Men- 

 delism and Sex." Original research is represented 

 bv " Parthenogenesis in Nicotiana," by Mrs. R. 

 Haig Thomas. .Among other contributions from G. P. 

 Mudge are three family histories described in careful 

 detail. These are the first of " Mendelian Collection of 

 Human Pedigrees," which appears as a sort of rival to 

 the "Treasury of Human Inheritance," issued by the 

 Galton Research Laboratory in National Eugenics. 



Under the heading " Methods and Results " are in- 

 cluded three papers by "Ardent Mendelian "; of these 

 the first calls for special comment. It purports to deal 

 with the "present position of Mendelians and Bio- 

 metricians." Its meaning looms a little vaguely from 

 a cloud of martial imager}-, in which biometricians 

 are represented as an army unsuccessfully resisting 

 the encroachments of Mendelians. fh^ author appears 

 to us completely to misunderstand the position of 

 biometricians, which is simply this, namely, that statis- 

 tical methods may be applied with advantage to the 

 study of many biological problems, including that of 

 heredity ; they do not hold that these methods should 

 be applied to the exclusion of others, such as the 

 Mendelian ; and the validity of the statistical descrip- 

 tions obtained by the correct application of their 

 methods would be in no way impaired, even if Men- 

 del's laws were proved to be universally true. We re- 

 gret to note that the tone of this article is calculated to 

 be offensive to biometricians; as an instance the fol- 

 lowing sentence may be taken: — "We may further 

 infer, therefore, that the discipline of the army is very 

 severe, and perhaps this may throw some light upon 

 the constant reappearance of the figure o'5 in relation 

 to the size of some of its artillery equipment." Since 

 o"5 is the value obtained ven.' frequently as a fraternal 

 correlation coefficient, it must be assumed that ".Ardent 

 Mendelian " means that this agreement is, to put it | 

 NO. 2096, VOL. 82] 



crudely, the result of " faking." If serious charges of 

 this kind are to be made, they should be made in 

 plain English, and supported by strong evidence. We 

 do not know whether the Mendel Journal has an 

 editor; if it has, we venture to suggest to him that it 

 will not lose in dignity or influence by adopting a more 

 courteous tone. It starts with a clean sheet, and need 

 not perpetuate the bitterness engendered by old contro- 

 versies. 



We regret that space does not permit us to deal 

 with the many interesting papers published in this 

 double number of Biomelrika, but will make reference 

 to two only selected from them. Dr. Galloway gives 

 an account of his seventeen years' experience of 

 canary breeding, with a partial analysis of the results. 

 His conclusions, valuable in themselves, together with 

 the clear descriptions and figures which he gives of the 

 different points of the various breeds of canaries, 

 should be of the utmost assistance to an\'one proposing 

 to breed these birds, either as a fancier or for the 

 purpose of studying the problems of heredity. 



Dr. Jenkinson deals with the relation between the 

 symmetry of the egg, the symmetry of segmentation, 

 and the symmetry of the embryo in the frog ; he finds 

 that "the position of the symmetry plane of the egg is 

 determined, in the absence of external factors, by the 

 path of entrance of the spermatozoon, and the point 

 of the entrance is nearly always opposite to the grey 

 crescent. The position of the first furrow is determined 

 by the second part of the sperm path, the line of 

 union of the male and female pronuclei. Thus the 

 internal factors which determine differentiation and 

 the direction of cell-division are not the same, although 

 they may coincide (when the two parts of the path lie 

 in the same meridional plane). They are also influ- 

 enced differently by different external factors." It 

 appears that there is always a closer relation between 

 the plane of symmetry of the unsegmented egg and 

 the sagittal plane of the embryo than between the first 

 furrow and either of them. E. H. J. S. 



DR. SHELFORD BI DWELL, F.R.S. 



SHELFORD BIDWELL was a distinguished 

 member of that class of men to whom English 

 science owes so much, the amateur, who, holding no 

 post as a professional scientific man or teacher, by 

 voluntarv devotion enriches science with investigations 

 of permanent value. 



Born at Thetford in 1848, and trained at Caius 

 College, Cambridge, he was placed among the Junior 

 Optimes in the Mathematical Tripos of 1870, and in the 

 following year he obtained second-class honours in 

 the Law and History Tripos. He read for 

 the profession of law at Lincoln's Inn and 

 was called to the bar in 1874. While he was 

 practising as a barrister he cultivated his taste 

 for physical science, and was attracted to the 

 meetings of the then newly founded Physical Society, 

 which he joined in the spring of 1877. Years after- 

 wards, in his presidential address of 189S to that 

 society, he referred to the matter in the following 

 terms : — 



" One of the most useful functions of these institu- 

 tions (the Physical and other kindred societies) is to 

 bring together and promote friendly intercourse among 

 fellow-workers in a particular branch of science. In 

 this connection, I myself (if you will pardon me for 

 referring to personal matters) owe a heavy debt of 

 gratitude to the Physical Society. At the time when 

 I was desirous of becoming a member, I was not 

 personally known to a single man who was in a 

 position to support my candidature. After some 

 preliminary correspondence, I introduced myself to 



