Walter Frank Rai^hael Weldon. 1860—1906. 37 
want to see really majestic brickwork go to Siena or Pistoja, where you can see naked men and 
women in the streets on a summer's day. Liibeck is very earnest, and very interesting, and so 
on and so on, but it is not beautiful ! . . . I am sending you a parcel of snails that you may see the 
sort of thing. 
In one beech wood, on the trunks of the trees, we collected rather more than 3000 snails, 
most of them Clausilia biplicata and C. laniinata (see the parcel), but some Helix lapidkida. 
There are certainly one thousand each of the two Clausilia species from this locality, and four or 
five hundred of each from another wood." 
Then follow pages of minute description of each type of shell in the parcel and 
discussion as to the possibility, by grinding or by taking a melted paraffin cast of 
the inside, of measuring biometrically this or that character. 
"I fancy want of moisture must have more to do with the absence of snails about you than 
want of chalk. What are you on ? Surely you have nearly the same Oolites and Lias that we 
have here? Have you committed the sin of digging up a bit of your moor, and looking 
among roots?" [Oxford, 13/9/1900.] 
"A happy New Year to you ! I send in another envelope specimens of the problematic snail, 
which has been found in sufficient numbers already. The pattern cannot, I think, be treated as 
due to lines of growth, and I ho})e it will be possible to find some way of estimating its 
variability. — It occurs more or less in a whole series of species here, and here only ; and the hills 
here are so separated by dee}) valleys, with great climatic differences at different elevations, that 
there are well isolated local races. 
It is rather hard for me to collect many races, because I have to look after my sick laboratory 
boy, and to teach him sea work, which takes time and produces only isolated examples of pretty 
museum things, which are a joy to see, although they teach one very little*. To do this and also 
to find time for a 2000 or 3000 feet climb after snails makes a very good day, and one goes to bed 
very fit, and full of beautiful remembrances. As one walks up hill, the impression is very 
absurd. Here the garden is full of bananas and svigar canes ; in an hour's climb one gets into a 
wood of pine trees and heather, and looks down on to all this tropical valley. The contrast 
is very curious, and I have not got accustomed to it. 
It seems rather a bad year for land beasts. The normal rainfall in December and January is 
said to be about thirty inches ; and this year practically no rain has fallen since the spring. I 
suppose as a result of this every live thing gets under the biggest block of basalt it can find. 
This makes snail hunting rather exciting, because when you get to the top of a kopje where the 
beasts are you find the sides so steep that any stone you disturb rolls down, unless you take 
great care. My first day's hunt resulted in such a roll. A stone which I could only just lift 
rolled down into a sugar cane bed some three or four hundred feet below. I have never felt so 
ill as I felt until I found that stone and made sure that it had not smashed up an innocent 
Portuguese peasant ! 
* One of the blows to Weldon, which resulted from his biometric view of life, was that his biological 
friends could not appreciate his new enthusiasms. They could not understand how the Museum 
"specimen" was in the future to be replaced by the "sample" of 500 to 1000 individuals, not to 
be looked at through a glass, but to be handled, used, and if necessary xised up. They warned bis 
pupils solemnly to give up this sort of fooling and take to the real business of the " biologer," if they 
wished for success. " I told about these snails," Weldon wrote on Oct. 11, 1900, "and he wrote me 
an earnest letter, urging me to return to the pleasant way of describing beasts for the delight of the 
faithful. That is the real thing if you want to be popular. Go to sea, and have a good time, and 
bring back a jelly fish which is bright blue." 
There is much missionary work yet to be done by biometricians, and Weldon's loss will make it 
still harder I 
