March 11, 1898.] 



SCIENCE. 



339 



(i) The values of all the correlation and 

 regression coefficients between any pair of 

 relations, i. e., heredity between any grade 

 of individual kinship. The chief of these 

 are actually calculated in the paper. 



(ii) The value of the stability that re- 

 sults from any long or short process of 

 selective breeding, and the variability of 

 the breed so established. A coefficient of 

 stability is introduced in the paper and dis- 

 cussed at some length. The consideration 

 of the more rapid influence of in- and in- 

 breeding is postponed. 



Ciii) The law of cross heredity, i. e., the 

 degree of relationship between two different 

 organs in kindred. It is shown that the 

 coefficient of cross heredity for any pair of 

 organs in any grade of kindred is equal to 

 the product of the coefficient of direct 

 heredity in that grade into the coefficient of 

 organic correlation. 



(iv) That simple panmixia without active 

 reversal of natural selection does not lead 

 to degeneration. 



It may be of interest to add that since 

 the law of ancestral heredity allows for the 

 variability of each individual ancestor from 

 the ancestral type, giving that variability 

 its share in the heritage of the offspring, it 

 is inconsistent with Weismann's theory of 

 the germplasma. It does not, of course, 

 answer one way or the other the question 

 as to the inheritance of acquired characters. 



To sum up, then, it seems to the present 

 writer that Galton's law of ancestral 

 heredity leads to, what has not hitherto 

 existed, a rounded and comprehensive 

 theory of heredity. It describes with sur- 

 prising closeness all facts so far quantita- 

 tively determined, and opens up a wide 

 range of conclusions which await testing 

 by fresh data. Should those data be in 

 agreement with its predictions, then the 

 law of ancestral heredity will in the future 

 play as large a part in the theory of evolu- 

 tion as the law of gravitation has played in 



planetary theory. It is the quantitative 

 basis on which Darwinism, the evolution 

 of species by natural selection combined with 

 heredity, will then be placed ; and at one 

 stroke it will clear away a veritable jungle of 

 semi-metaphysical speculations and hypoth- 

 eses, and this for the simple reason that 

 it is based upon quantitative observations 

 and not on verbal subtleties. It will be 

 difficult, perhaps, to make people realize 

 that there is a science of heredity, simple 

 and consistent, in existence ; yet even at 

 the present time it is the number of ob- 

 servers and experimenters, rather than the 

 science, which needs to be strengthened. 



THE BOYAL SOCIETY'S ANTARCTIC CONFER- 

 ENCE. 



The Eoyal Society held an important 

 meeting on February 24th for the purpose 

 of discussing Antarctic exploration, which 

 is at present engaging the attention of the 

 British government. We take from the 

 London Times the following account of the 

 discussion : 



Dr. John Murray, of the Challenger 

 Expedition, said that, from a scientific 

 point of view, the advantages to be derived 

 from a well-equipped and well-directed ex- 

 pedition to the Antarctic region would, at 

 the present time, be manifold. Every de- 

 partment of natural knowledge would be 

 enriched by systematic observations as to 

 the order in which phenomena coexist and 

 follow each other in regions of the earth's 

 surface about which we knew very little or 

 were wholly ignorant. It was one of the 

 great objects of science to collect observa- 

 tions of the kind indicated, and it might be 

 safely said that without them we could 

 never arrive at a right understanding of 

 the phenomena by which we were sur- 

 rounded, even in the habitable parts of the 

 globe. Dr. Murray pointed out a funda- 

 mental topographical difference between the 

 Arctic and Antarctic. In the northern 



