EXXVI Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased. 
Thus was ‘ Biometrika’ born and christened. The reply to circulars issued 
during December was sufficiently favourable to warrant further proceedings. 
By June of 1901 its publication through the Cambridge University Press 
had been arranged for, and the sympathetic help of the Syndics and the care 
given by the University Printers enabled us to start well and surmount 
many difficulties peculiar to a new branch of science. During the years in 
which Weldon was co-editor with Karl Pearson he contributed much, directly 
and indirectly, to its pages. He was referee for all essentially biological 
papers; and his judgment in this matter was of the utmost value. He 
revised and almost re-wrote special articles. He was ever ready with 
encouragement and aid when real difficulties arose. 
Starting on October 16, 1900, and extending throughout the early 
‘Biometrika’ letters to his co-editor, runs a flood of information with regard 
to Mendel and his hypothesis. 
“ About pleasanter things: I have heard of and read a paper by one 
Mendel, on the results of crossing peas, which I think you would like to 
read. It is in the ‘Abhandlungen des naturforschenden Vereines in 
Brunn’ for 1865. I have the R.S. copy here, but I will send it to you if 
you want it.’—(October 16, 1900.) 
Then follows a résumé of the first of Mendel’s memoirs, and for montbs 
the letters—always treatises—are equally devoted to snails, Mendelism, and 
the basal things of life. , 
The earlier part of 1901 was chiefly occupied by snails, but a new factor 
had come into Weldon’s many-sided occupations. It was settled that 
‘Biometrika’ should have in an early number a critical bibliography of 
papers dealing with statistical biology. Weldon undertook the task of 
preparing it, as his study of Mendel had led him to a very great number 
of such papers dealing with inheritance, and the section on Heredity was to 
be published first. Like all his projects, it was to be done in so thorough 
and comprehensive a manner that years were required for its completion. 
A very full list of titles was formed, especially in the Inheritance section, 
and many of the papers therein were thoroughly studied and abstracted. 
But such study meant with him not only grasping the writer’s conclusions, 
but testing his arithmetic and weighing his logic. Thus Weldon’s note on 
“Change in Organic Correlation .of &icaria ranunculoides during the 
, Flowering Season,” arose from this bibliographical work and the erroneous 
manner in which he found Verschaffelt and MacLeod dealing with correla- 
tion. A further result of this work was that his confidence in the generality 
of the Mendelian hypotheses was much shaken. He found that Mendel’s 
views were not consonant with the results formulated in a number of papers 
he had been led to abstract, and that the definite categories used by some 
Mendelian writers did not correspond to really well-defined classes in the 
characters themselves. 
To those who accept the biometric standpoint, that, in the main, 
