x] Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased. 
read; his keen eye found a new problem where the ordinary man saw 
a cow-pasture, or a dusty hedgerow, and he started again with unremitted 
ardour to what had for himself the greater interest. 
In the summer the Pearsons were at Hast Ilsley, some seventeen miles 
from Oxford, and there was cycling out several times a week; there was 
steady joint work on the determinantal theory of inheritance as suited by 
Weldon, which, it is to be hoped, is sufficiently advanced to be completed 
and published. He had in August, 1905, given to the Summer Meeting of 
the University Extension in Oxford a lecture on “ Inheritance in Animals 
and Plants,” and this had taken up some of his energy during the summer 
vacation. Qn the whole, however, he worked persistently at the Inherit- 
ance book. 
It cannot be denied that those who were often with Weldon during the 
last two years were occasionally anxious on his account. The pace at which 
he worked had been too great—but at no time was it definitely realised that 
there was cause for immediate alarm. His intellectual activity was never 
‘apparently diminished, and his long cycling rides were maintained to the 
end; though an occasional, but never long persistent, lack of the old joyous- 
ness of life was noticeable. 
In November, 1905, Weldon was unfortunately taken off from the work on 
his Inheritance book by the presentation to the Royal Society of a paper 
by Captain C. C. Hurst, “On the Inheritance of Coat-Colour in Horses.” He 
had had no proper summer holiday, but he threw himself nine hours a day 
into the study of “The General Studbook.” 
“T can do nothing else until I have found out what it means . 
The question between Mendel and Galton’s theory of Reversion ought 
to be answered out of these. Thank God, I have not finished that book. 
There must be a chapter on Race Horses!” 
He promised to communicate a note to the Society involving details of his 
inquiry. This was done on January 18, 1906, in a “Note on the Offspring 
of Thoroughbred Chestnut Mares.” 
“The object of the present note is partly to fulfil my promise and 
partly to call attention to certain facts which must be considered in the 
attempt to apply any Mendelian formula whatever to the inheritance of 
coat-colour in race horses.” 
Here it can only be said that he took up the subject with his usual vigour 
and thoroughness. But he was overworked and overwrought, and a holiday 
was absolutely needful. He went to Rome, but the volumes of the Studbook 
went with him. His letters are filled with Studbook detail till Easter, with 
hardly a reference to anything else. Re-reading them now, one sees how 
this drudgery, with no proper holiday, told on him. Hundreds of pedigrees 
were formed, and a vast amount of material was reduced. At Easter, he and 
his wife went to the little inn at Woolstone, at the foot of the White Horse 
