44 
Walter Frmih Raphael Weldon. 1860—1906. 
men only want tips. When one gets off the road into the hills the goatherds and other ruffians 
are most friendly. They want to see one's camera, and one's knife, and of course they want half 
one's bread, but they never ask for tips, and my throat is still uncut. 
We have so far had two wet days ; to-day, and one other. — We have had several inches 
to-day, and shall have some more ; but between we have had the most glorious sun. I look as 
if I washed in strong cofiee every morning." [Palermo, 31/12/1903.] 
At the beginning of 1904 the work on the Brescia Glausilia was in progress, 
the mice were multiplying after their kind and Weldon's thoughts were turning 
more and more to a determinantal theory of inheritance, which should give simple 
Mendelism at one end of the range and blended inheritance at the other. Easter 
was spent in common, one editor at Rotherfield Greys and the other at Peppard, 
with the usual flow of suggestion on Weldon's part and the bi-weekly cyclings to 
Oxford to look after the mice. Now and then the fear would strike Weldon's 
friends that life was being lived at too fast a pace, but the constant intellectual 
and physical activity was so characteristic of the man that there was no means of 
calling halt, and to many when Weldon was most active he seemed most fit 
and well. The summer found the Pearsons twelve miles from Oxford, at Cogges, 
near Witney, and the Galtons twenty miles further, at Bibury ; there was much 
cycling too and fro, and the plan of a new book by Weldon on Inheritance was 
drafted, and some of the early chaptens written. The vacation was broken by the 
visit to Cambridge — Weldon cycling in one day from Oxford — for the British 
Association. The Presidential Address in the Zoological Section was chiefly an 
attack upon biometric work and methods, and the discu.ssion which followed cul- 
minated in the President dramatically holding aloft the volumes of this Journal 
as patent evidence of the folly of the school, and refusing the offer of a truce 
to tliis tiine-wasting controversy. The excitement of the meeting, as earlier 
contests at the Zoological and Linnean Societies, seemed to brace Weldon to 
greater intellectual activity and wider plans, but the torpedo boat was being 
run at full speed. 
The book on Inheritance occupied most of the remainder of the year, and to 
aid it forward and help those of us who were not biologists to clearer notions, I 
suggested to Weldon a course of lectures in London to my own little group of 
biometric workers. The project grew, other departments of the College desired 
to attend, and ultimately the lectures were thrown open to all members of the 
University and even to the outside public. Weldon had a good audience of more 
than a hundred, and enjoyed the return to his old environment. But it may be 
doubted whether his vitality responded as quickly as of old to the additional 
stress ; there were special elements of difficulty, and I believe now that it would 
have been kinder and more helpful had we limited the audience to my own 
small body of sympathetic students. 
" It will be a great pleasure to me to come and talk, and to feel that you cared to ask me ; the 
lectui'es will do far more good to me than to anyone else ... and I owe U. C. L. a bigger effort 
than this anyhow." [Oxford, 16/10/04.] 
