
1904.]| Anniversary Address by Sir William Huggins. 27 
In conclusion it may be stated that Professor Perkin is not only the 
author of the above and numerous other important researches which are 
outside the scope of this brief summary, but that he has also created a 
school of research in organic chemistry, which stands in the very highest 
rank. 
DARWIN MEDAL. 
The Darwin Medal is awarded to Mr. William Bateson, F.R.S., for his 
researches on heredity and variation. 
Mr. Bateson began his scientific career as a morphologist, and distinguished 
himself by researches on the structure and development of Balanoglossus, 
which have had a far-reaching influence on morphological science, and which 
established to the satisfaction of most anatomists the affinity of the 
Enteropneusta to the Chordate phylum. Dissatisfied, however, with the 
- methods of morphological research as a means of advancing the study of 
evolution, he set himself resolutely to the task of finding a new method of 
attacking the species problem. Recognising the fact that variation was the 
basis upon which the theory of evolution rested, he turned his attention to 
the study of that subject, and entered upon a series of researches which 
culminated in the publication in 1894 of his well-known work, entitled 
“ Materials for the Study of Variation, etc.’ This book broke new ground. Not 
only was it the first systematic work which had been published on variation, 
and, with the exception of Darwin’s “ Variation of Animals and Plants under 
Domestication,” the only extensive work dealing with it; but it was the first 
serious attempt to establish the importance of the principle of discontinuity 
in variation in its fundamental bearing upon the problem of evolution, a 
principle which he constantly and successfully urged when the weight of 
authority was against it. In this work he collected and systematised a great 
number of examples of discontinuous variation, and by his broad and masterly 
handling of them he paved the way for those remarkable advances in the 
study of heredity which have taken place in the last few years, and to which 
he has himself so largely contributed. He was the first in this country to 
recognise the importance of the work of Mendel, which, published in 1864, 
and for a long time completely overlooked by naturalists, contained a clue to 
the labyrinth of facts which had resulted from the labours of his predecessors. 
He has brought these results prominently forward in England in his 
important reports to the Evolution Committee of the Royal Society, and in 
papers before the Royal and other Societies, and also before horticulturists 
and breeders of animals. He has gathered about him a distinguished body 
