42 
Walter Fmnix Raphael Weldon. 1860—1906. 
was calculation and reduction of Glausilia data. Later there was a hurried visit 
to the Tegernsee and to Munich for opera. At Easter, 1902, there was a noble 
missionary effort (with the Brunsviga) to Parma ; the missionary carried a memoir, 
which he had spent some weeks in rewriting in biometric form, but his efforts to 
show that a science of statistics exists were unavailing. In the summer Biometrika 
was edited from Bainbridge in Wensleydale, and accompanied by Sandro, the 
co-editors cycled to the churchyards of the Yorkshire dales, collecting material 
for their joint paper " On Assortative Mating in Man " (34). From Bainbridge the 
Weldons went to the British Association meeting at Belfast, where an evening lecture 
on Inheritance was given. At Christmas came one of the above-mentioned visits to 
Palermo to collect Sicilian snails. An event of this year (1902) was the publication 
of Mr Bateson's ilfencZers Principles of Heredity. The origin of Weldon's first paper 
on Mendel has been described in this memoir ; it was an expansion of a part of the 
promised bibliography for this Journal, and was written without any arriere pensee 
or knowledge of Mr Bateson's not then published experimental work. It is 
impossible for one who has been and again may be a combatant in this field to say 
more than that the tone of Mr Bateson's defence deeply pained Weldon, and 
rendered it difficult for a finely strung temperament to maintain — as it did 
maintain to the end — the impersonal tone of scientific controversy. 
In the spring of 1903 Weldon was busy, as were the whole available members 
of the biometric school, in studying the influence of environment and of period of 
season on the variation and correlation of the floral parts of Lesser Celandine. 
" Give my love to the Brethren who are cooperating in the matter of Celandines, and beseech 
them to make a better map of their country than the enclosed." [Oxford, 23/2/03.] 
Weldon threw his whole energy and love of minute exactitude into the task, 
and his letters are filled with an account of the almost daily changes in the type 
and variability of the Celandine flowers from his selected stations. The result of 
this enquiry was the collection of an immense amount of data showing that 
environment and period in the flowering season affected the flower characters to an 
extent comparable with the differences attributed to local races. The reduction of 
the material has gone on progress! vel}^ if intermittently since, and it is hoped that 
a memoir, which will be a sequel to that issued in Biometrika* , may be published 
shortly (35). The wider standpoint of this second memoir will be chiefly due to 
Weldon's initiative and critical mind. At Easter of 1903 a series of mishaps pre- 
vented the common holiday, but this was more than compensated for by the summer 
vacation. The Weldons started with a sea trip to Marseilles and back. They then 
returned to Oxford, that work on the article Crustacea for the Cambridge Natural 
History might be carried on, and an eye kept on the mice. But a biometric camp 
was formed at Peppard on the Chilterns; here the " Consulting Editor" and one of 
the co-editors had established themselves, and the Weldons took a week-end cottage. 
The three Oxford members of the party arrived partly on cycles and partly on four 
* Vol. II. pp. 145—164, Cooperative Investigations on Plants. II. Variation and Correlation in 
Lesser Celandine from Divers Localities. 
