﻿Manchester Memoirs, Vol. xlix. (1905), No. 6. 



VI. On the Supposed Antagonism of Mendelian to 

 Biometric Theories of Heredity. 



By A. D. DARBISHIRE, M.A. 



Received and read January 10th, /90J. 

 I* 



Dissensions in scientific matters may be said to be of 

 two kinds, of which one is a disagreement about fact, 

 and can be settled by an appeal to fact, while the 

 other is the conflict of theoretical interpretations which 

 cannot be so easily concluded. When Owen said that 

 an ape's brain had not a hippocampus minor and 

 Huxley asserted that it had, Flower announced that he 

 had an ape's brain in his pocket : and the dissection of 

 the brain put an end to the discussion. But in the second 

 form of controversy no such touchstone can be applied, 

 and in the debate on heredity at Cambridge this year 

 Mendelian maize-cobs were displayed in vain. Of this 

 kind of controversy there are again two sorts, one in 

 which the theories put forward by the opposite factions 

 are mutually exclusive, and another in which while there 

 is apparent incompatibility the truth of both of the 

 hypotheses is ultimately demonstrable. It remains to be 

 seen to which of these subdivisions the Cambridge debatef 

 and the wider discussion of which it was the outcome, 

 are to be assigned. If the two theories are mutually 

 exclusive, which is right ? If on the other hand they are 

 not, how do they fit in with one another ? These are 

 questions which " the general enquiring public " may be 



* This essay is so arranged that if the reader is not interested in the 

 phenomenon of hybridization he may leave out Part N. 

 t Reported in Nature, Vol. 70, pp. 538 and 539. 



February 2jt/i, igoj. 



