Walter Frank Raphael Weldon. XXXV 
sensibly greater than of the corresponding whorls of adults. In other words, 
_ stability to the type is preserved by selection in each new generation. In the 
second memoir, Weldon sought for demonstration of a like periodic selection 
in the ©. itala he had collected from the public walks round the Citadel of 
Brescia. He failed, however, to trace it, and was forced to conclude that 
C. itala is either not now subject to selective elimination for this character 
or is multiplying at present under specially favourable conditions at Brescia, 
or again, as both young and old were gathered in early spring, after their 
winter sleep, that elimination takes place largely during the winter, and 
“that individuals of the same length, collected in the autumn, at the close of 
their period of growth, might be more variable than those which survive the 
winter.” 
The problem of growth, to be studied only under conditions of captivity, 
possibly modifying the natural growth immensely, has made the crab 
investigation an extremely complex one. Weldon solved the difficulty 
by the brilliant idea that the snail carries with it practically a record of its 
youth. If the wear and tear of the outside of the shell to some extent 
confuses the record there, a carefully ground axial section will reveal by the 
lower whorls the infancy of the organism. Hence the days given to experi- 
mental grinding, the training in manipulation and the final success, and then the 
steady work, grinding and measuring a few specimens a day, till the necessary 
hundreds were put together; the laborious calculations not in the least 
indicated in the papers; and the illustration of how shells may be used— 
by those who will give the needful toil—to test the truth of the Darwinian 
theory. ? 
On November 16, Weldon wrote :— 
“Do you think it would be too hopelessly expensive to start a journal 
ot some-kind?.... 
“Tf one printed five hundred copies of a royal ,8vo. once a quarter, 
. sternly repressing anything by way of illustration except process draw- 
ings and curves, what would the annual loss be, taking any practical 
price per number? .... If no English publisher would undertake it 
at a cheap rate, the cost of going to Fischer, of Jena, or even Engelmann 
_ would not be very great.” 
This was the first definite suggestion of the establishment of ‘ Biometrika.’ 
On November 29, the draft circular, corresponding fairly closely to the first 
editorial of the first number, reached his co-editor from Oxford with the 
words: “Get a better title for this would-be journal than I can think of!” 
The circular went back to Oxford with the suggestion that the science in 
future should be called Biometry, and its official organ be ‘ Biometrika.’ 
And on December 2, 1900, Weldon wrote ;— 
“J did not see your letter yesterday until it was too late for you to 
have an answer last night. I like ‘ Biometrika’ and the sub-title.” 
