Walter Frank Baphael WeldoiL 1 8(50— 1906. 
23 
often a compromise between different methods and divergent personalities ; if 
merely administrative they are successful or not, according to the width of view of 
some dominating temperament. If run in the interests of one school, still more 
of one individual, a committee may no doubt do good work, but it is likely, at the 
same time, seriously to damage the reputation of any larger body in whose name 
it works, by too markedly connecting it with one aspect of a problem or one side of 
an unsettled controversy. These difficulties of the situation seem only by degrees 
to have come home to the founders of the Evolution Committee. 
The project was first discussed informally by R. Meldola, Francis Galton, and 
Weldon, at a meeting held on the 9th of December, 1893, at the Savile Club. 
Francis Darwin, A. Macalister, and E. B. Poulton had expressed themselves 
willing to assist such a project. It was settled that a proposal should be made to 
the Royal Society for the formation of a committee "For the purpose of conducting 
Statistical Enquiry into the Variability of Organisms," the members suggested 
being F. Darwin, F. Galton, A. Macalister, R. Melilola, E. B. Poulton, and W. F. R. 
Weldon, to whom " it may afterwards be desirable to add a statistician." It was 
resolved further to ask for a grant of money to obtain material and assistance in 
measurement and computation. 
A Committee* consisting of these members was finally constituted by the 
Council of the Royal Society, with Francis Galton as chairman and Weldon as 
secretary, the Committee being entitled : " Committee for conducting Statistical 
Inquiries into the Measurable Characteristics of Plants and Animals." The use of 
the words statistical and measurable, somewhat narrowly, but accurately, defined 
the proposed researches of the Committee. It went on until 1897, with these 
members, the same title and scope. Then in the early part of that year its scope 
was much extended by adding to its objects the " accurate investigation of 
Variation, Heredity, Selection, and other phenomena relating to Evolution," and 
W. Bateson, S. H. Burbury, F. D. Godman, W. Heape, E. R. Lanke.ster, M. Masters, 
Karl Pearson, O. Salvin and Thiselton-Dyer were added to its number. But at 
present our account must deal with the earlier bioraetric period of the Committee. 
Looking back on the matter now, one realises how much Weldon's work was 
hampered by this Committee. It is generally best that a man's work should be 
published on his own responsibility, and when he is a man of well-known ability 
and established reputation, grants in aid can always be procured. In this case 
Weldon had a sympathetic committee, but the members were naturally anxious on 
the one hand for the prestige of the Society with whose name they were associated, 
and secondly, they were desirous of showing that they were achieving sornethingf. 
Both conditions were incompatible with tentative researches such as biometry then 
* First meeting, January 25, 1894. 
t " Of course these considerations only make the problem more interesting than it was before: and 
I very much want to solve it. But the committee may say that it requires a problem which is 
reasonably certain to yield an adequate solution in a fairly short time, and that so risky an attempt as 
this is not suitable for its present work." Letter of Nov. 13, 1894, relating to the secretion of a specific 
poison by Baphnia. 
