48 Walter FranA' Raphael Weldon. 1860—1906. 
" The object of the present note is partly to fulfil my promise and partly to call attention 
to certain facts which must be considered in the attempt to apply any ]\Iendelian formula 
whatever to the inheritance of coat-colour in race-horses." 
It is impossible at present to say more on this point, for the whole subject 
is likely to be matter for further controversy. Even one authenticated case of a 
non-chestnut offspring to chestnut parents is sufficient to upset the theory of the 
' pure gamete,' but if studbooks are to be taken as providing the data, the whole 
question must turn on whether one in sixty of the entries of the offspring of 
chestnut parents can be reasonably considered as a misprint or an error in 
record. 
Here it can only be said that Weldon took up the subject with bis usual vigour 
and thoroughness. But he was overworked and overwrought and a holiday was 
absolutely needful. He went to Rome, but the volumes of the Studbook went 
with him : 
"Will you think me a brute, if I take the Studbook to Rome ? I really want a holiday, but 
I cannot leave this thing unsettled. " 
And then from Rome : 
" I think it will be worth while to deal for once with a whole population, not with a small 
random sample. Only I could find it in my heart to wish one need not do it in Rome ! To sit 
here eight hours a day or so, doing mere clerk's work, seems rather waste of life ? " 
And again : 
"I have really been working too hard to write, or to do anything else. I have seen nothing of 
Rome.... I want to know what these horses will load to, but it would not interest me at all 
to know that my paper on them would or would not be printed. More important is the enor- 
mous time these horses will take. It seems clear that one ought to carry these arrays back to 
another generation of ancestors — and that means a very long job. I wish I had a pupil ! 
A mere clerk would be no good, but a pupil, such as one had in good old Gower Street, would 
help with the drudgery, and then he might stick his name all over the paper, if he liked." 
[February, 1906.] 
The letters are filled with Studbook detail till Easter, there is hardly a 
reference to anything else. Re-reading them now one sees how this drudgery 
with no proper holiday told on Weldon. Hundreds of pedigrees were formed and 
a vast amount of material reduced. At Easter the Weldons went to the little inn 
at Woolstone, at the foot of the White Horse Hill, and his co-editor came down 
later to Longcot, a mile away, for the joint vacation. Weldon was still hard 
at work on the Studbooks, but he was intellectually as keenly active as of old; 
he was planning the lines of his big memoir on coat-colour in horses (40) and 
showing how they illustrated the points he had already found in the mice. He 
was photographing the White Horse, and rubbing mediaeval idlers' scrawlings 
on the church pillars. He projected the despoiling of a barrow, and planned 
future work and rides. 
On Sunday, April 8, he rode into Oxford to develop photographs, and the 
present writer rode some miles of the way with him ; the joint ride terminated 
with the smoke by the roadside and Weldon's propounding the problem which 
