Walter Frank Raphael Weldon. 1860—1906. 
15 
December, 1890, closed the Cambridge woi'k* and concluded the Wanderjahre. 
Weldon now succeeded Ray Lankester in the Jodrell Professorship at University 
College. In June he had been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society largely on 
the basis of his first two biometric papers, which will be considered more in detail 
in the next section. 
It will be seen that the years between Weldon 's degree and his first pro- 
fessoriate were years of intense activity. He was teaching many things, studying 
many things, planning many things. His travels perfected his linguistic powers, 
and his fluency in French, Italian and German was soon remarkable. But while 
this added immensely to his delight in travel, it opened to him also those stores of 
literature, which appealed so strongly to his artistic temperament. From the 
mediaeval epics to Balzac he was equally at home in French literature ; and the 
Italian historians were read and carefully abstracted, that he might imder-stand 
Dante without the aid of a commentator, and appreciate Italian towns without the 
help of a guide-book. In German he had a less wide knowledge of the earlier 
literature and history, but he spoke the language with an accent and correctness 
remarkable in an Englishman. In later years he had commenced the study of 
Spani.sh, the Romance tongues and literatures being always more sympathetic to 
him than the Scandinavian or Teutonic. His remarkable thoroughness in science 
reappeared as a form of scholarly instinct when he approached history and 
literature, and the present writer remembers Weldon's keen pleasure and exacti- 
tude in following up more than one historical enquiry. His delight in knowing 
spread far beyond the limits of natural science. 
V. London and the First Professoriate, 1891-1899. 
A word must here be said as to the transition which took place during the 
Wanderjahre in Weldon's ideas. He had started, as most of the younger men of 
that day, with an intense enthusiasm for the Darwinian theory of evolution ; it 
threw open to him, as to them, a wholly new view of life with its possibility of 
seeing things as a connected whole. Weldon realised to the full that the great 
scheme of Darwin was only a working hypothesis, and that it was left to his 
disciples to complete the proofs, of which the master had only sketched the 
* A note may be added as to the general influence of Weldon at Cambridge. At the time 
Weldon began lecturing there were a considerable number of students largely attracted to Cambridge 
by Balfour's fame and remaining there to mourn his loss. Mr W. Bateson of St John's, Dr Harmer 
of King's, Professor Sherrington of Caius, Professors D'Arcy Thompson and J. Reynolds Green of 
Trinity, Professor Adami and Mr A. E. Shipley of Christ's, graduated in 1883 and 1884, and all, to some 
extent, came under his influence. For six years (1884-1890) he gave advanced lectures to the 
candidates for Part II of the Natural Sciences Tripos. During these few years the number of men in 
his class who have since done much to advance science was considerable. The following is by 
no means a complete list. Among botanists, F. W. Oliver, C. A. Barber, W. B. Bottomley ; among 
geologists, T. T. Groom, P. Lake, S. H. Keynolds, H. Kynaston and H. Woods ; among physiologists, 
pathologists and medical men, A. E. Durham, H. E. Durham, J. S. Edkins, W. B. Hardy, A. P. Beddard, 
E. H. Hankin, H. Head; and among zoologists, H. Bury, G. P. Bidder, W. F. H. Blandford, 
E. Assheton, F. V. Theobald, T. H. Eiches, E. W. MacBride, H. H. Brindley, A. T. Masterman, 
C. Warburton, and Malcolm Laurie. 
