43° 



NA TURE 



[February io, 1910 



such diametrically opposed journals reviewed by the same 

 person, who, if we may judge by certain statements in the 

 review, is himself a biometriciaii, or very friendly disposed 

 towards them. I am alone concerned in dealing with 

 your reviewer's misinterpretation and imperfect reading of 

 certain articles of mine written under the nom de plume 

 of " Ardent Mendelian." He accuses me of " adopting a 

 tone calculated to be offensive to biometricians," and as 

 an instance he cites the following sentence : — " 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 0-5 in relation to 

 the size of some of its artillery equipment."^ Your re- 

 viewer interprets this as a " serious charge of faking " 

 directed against biometricians. I do not know upon what 

 plan he writes his reviews or whether he reads sufficient 

 of the article he reviews to grasp properly its tone and 

 meaning. Nothing was farther from my intention than to 

 impute want of integrity to any biometrician, notwithstand- 

 ing some bad examples which they themselves have set, 

 when they deal with Mendelians. Had your reviewer but 

 read a few lines lower down (p. 160) he would have found 

 the following chivalrous sentence, describing them : — ■ 



" In some respects it is a very fine army, and it is 

 certainly an imposing one upon parade. It is led, officered 

 and. manned by men of transcendent intellect, of whom any 

 country may be proud." And again, on p. 185, in com- 

 menting upon Dr. Raymond Pearl's work, I wrote : — 

 " Could we assent to his methods we might commend his 

 results ; we can admire his skill as a workman, while 

 lamenting his tools." Then on p. 164, where I criticised 

 the particular way in which Prof. Karl Pearson had set 

 certain questions to a correspondent, I wrote : — " We do 

 not, of course, for one moment suggest that Prof. Pearson 

 desires to be unfair, or that the nature of the question has 

 in the smallest degree influenced the answer. We accept 

 the evidence quite unreservedly." 



These quotations are sufficient to show that the articles 

 written by " Ardent Mendelian " were couched in the most 

 courteous tones, and contained even chivalrous acknowledg- 

 ments of the high ability and integrity of those whose 

 methods of investigation and conclusions he felt bound to 

 criticise. None but the most tender conscience could have 

 misconstrued the particular sentence complained of into 

 a charge of " faking " when the context of the article was 

 taken into account; for how could "any country be 

 proud " of men who " faked "? Your reviewer either 

 could not have read any more of the article than the 

 sentence he quoted, or he must have approached his work 

 in a peculiarly prejudiced frame of mind. I do protest 

 against the unfairness of such treatment. When a writer 

 has been deliberately careful to adopt a courteous tone, it 

 is not fairness to disregard his context — to quote a par- 

 ticular sentence and then to misconstrue it. 



This sentence was never intended to convey a charge of 

 ." faking," and it simply alluded to the biometrical method 

 of definition in constituting a sort of guide when dealing 

 with investigations in certain problems. Had I intended 

 to impeach the probity of any biometrician mv language 

 would have been unmistakable. If your reviewer had but 

 recalled to mind the earlier works of biometricians, he 

 would have remembered a generalisation called " homo- 

 typosis," and he would have further recalled that the 

 homotypic average of correlation turned round the figure 

 0-5. He would also have remembered that this figure was 

 reached by a remarkable process of excluding the. parts or 

 organs which were either "too like" or "too different," 

 and this process was based upon an attempted definition 

 by Prof. Pearson — who in my article is alluded to as the 

 Pield Marshal— in which he hoped to define the differ- 

 ences between variation and differentiation. This corre- 

 lation figure of 05 was therefore reached by the exclusion 

 of all parts or organs which would otherwise naturally 

 tend to raise or lower the figure, and it was to this process 

 of working bv definition and exclusion, as defined by the 

 " Field Marshal " that I alluded when I wrote the sentence 

 which has been, I cannot but help thinking, carelessly 

 misconstrued. 



2 It <houW be I 



advisedly wr 



NO. 2102, VOL. 82] 



In conclusion, I can only ask that your readers will read 

 the articles and judge for themselves of their courteous 

 tone and fair treatment. 



"Ardent Mendelian." 



" .Ardent Mendelun " is correct in supposing that I 

 am a biometrician ; but I am, at the same time, a befiever 

 in Mendelism, and I hold that the main aims of the 

 Mendel Journal and Biometrika are not opposed. To me 

 it appears that people who are studying the same problem 

 by different methods should work in sympathy with one 

 another, and it is for just this reason that I criticised the 

 tone of " Ardent Mendelian," as I was of opinion that 

 it was calculated to make such sympathy difficult. 



With regard to the sentence beginning " We may further 

 infer," I still maintain that my interpretation was the 

 most natural one, even after making every allowance for 

 the context ; but I accept with the greatest pleasure the 

 author's correction. E. H. J. S. 



THE INTERPRETATION OF TOPOGRAPHIC 



MAPS.'^ 

 'T'HE evolution of maps, and of our ideas regarding 



-*• tlieir use and function, mijjht be made the sub- 

 ject of an interesting and profitable study. The inain 

 object of the early cartographers was to plot down 

 with all attainable accuracy the relative size and posi- 

 tion of countries, of towns or of smaller units, and 

 to indicate such natural features as mountains and 

 rivers; roads were added later, and, as the necessity 

 became more evident and geodetic methods improved, 

 the scale was enlarged, while the increasing accuracy 

 permitted additional and minuter details to be intro- 

 duced. The organisation of national cadastral sur- 

 veys gave us at last the large-scale contoured maps 

 that, with or without orographic colouring, consti- 

 tute the highest expression of the map-maker's 

 science. 



Upon the basis of the topographic maps, special 

 features of distribution and of activities, such as 

 direction of winds and currents, may be shown, and 

 lines of equivalent development of artificial and 

 natural phenomena, such as isobars and all the other 

 "isos," may find expression. Of these the topographic 

 map takes no account ; there has, however, with pro- 

 gress of geographical and geological methods, come 

 a new way of looking at and interpreting a topo- 

 graphic map, so that it is made to disclose not only 

 much that is hidden from the ordinary user, but even 

 more than was recognised by the surveyor who made 

 it. The old reading of a map was an appreciation of 

 the morphology of a piece of country regarded as a 

 statical phenomenon, without reference to either its 

 internal anatomy, its physiology, or the mode and 

 causes of its development; it asked for no reason. 

 The new method seeks dynamical interpretations of all 

 geographical phenomena, and asks how, and why, 

 things are as they are. 



A range of hills is no longer simply an elevated 

 tract of country, delineated upon a map by certain 

 contour lines, but it becomes the expression of facts 

 of structure produced in a particular way, out of 

 materials of a particular kind, by agencies the nature 

 of which can often be inferred directly from the data 

 supplied by the topographic map itself. In like 

 manner, the history of a river-system, the develop- 

 ment and interactions of its parts, and the climatic 

 vicissitudes that have affected its drainage basin can 

 be deduced from the map by the familiar exegetical 

 device of reading the spirit of the commentator into 

 the text. The deoartment of geographical study, seek- 

 ing among other objects the cultivation of this faculty, 



1 " The Interpretation of Topographic Maps." By R. T). Salisbury and 

 W. W. Attwood. Pp. 8i+c'vx plates. Department of the Interior, U.S. 

 Geoloeical S-'rvey, Professional Paper, 60. (Washington : 

 Printing Office, 1909.) 



