Walter Franl Raphael Weldon. 18G0— 1906. 
r 
master that he protested against the study of insects, asking : " How do you think 
that such pursuits will put a leg of mutton on your table?" and the ability that 
proceeded from the school has been attributed by one of its former pupils to the 
special class from which it drew its chief material. 
III. Lehrjahre. 
Weldon did not remain fully three years at this school. It was followed by 
some months of private study and he matriculated at 16 (1876) in the University 
of London. In October of '76 we find him at University College taking classes in 
Greek, English, Latin, and French, with two courses of pure mathematics. In the 
summer term of 1877 physics and applied mechanics were studied. During this 
whole session he also attended Daniel Oliver's general lectures on botany and 
Ray Lankester's on zoology. He used to come up to town for Oliver's 8 o'clock 
lectures, getting his breakfast at a bun-house on the way*. Of his education at 
University College he especially praised in after years Olaus Henrici's lectures 
on mathematics. They were he held most excellent, and he considered Henrici 
the first born teacher under whom he came. Later in the Christmas vacation of 
1879, after he had gone up to Cambridge, lie researched for some weeks under Ray 
Lankester, wlio set him to work out the structure of the gills of the mollusc 
Trigonia. This completes Weldon's relations as a student to University College. 
The difficulty of access, or possibly Walter Weldon's strong views, led Raphael 
Weldon in the autumn of 1877 to transfer himself to King-'s CoUeg-e. Here he 
stayed for two terms attending classes in chemistry, mathematics, physics, and 
mechanics, beside the zoology course of A. H. Garrod and the biology of G. F. Yeo. 
Divinity under Barry, at that time I believe compulsory, was also taken. At this 
time Weldon had the medical profession in view. He was only entered on the 
Register of Medical Students on July 6, 1878, but there can be no question that 
his course on the whole was directed towards the Preliminary Scientific Examination 
of the London M.B. This examination he took in December, 1878, after he had 
gone up to Cambridge ; he was coached for it by T. W. Bridge, now Professor of 
Zoology in Birmingham, but he had already completed the bulk of the work in his 
London courses. With the Preliminary Scientific, Weldon's relation to London 
ceased. His student career there was not of quite two years' duration and it dealt 
with a variety of subjects, dictated as much by Weldon's catholic tastes, as by the 
discursiveness of the London examination schedule. But in his case, as in that of 
others, the grounding he received in physics and mathematics became a valuable 
asset, and the taste for languages, afterwards so emphasised, was to some extent 
trained and coordinated with literary knowledge. Yet Weldon's earlier instinct 
to study biology was not substantially modified either by the choice of medicine as 
a profession or by the diversity of his London studies. In 1877 he attended the 
Plymouth Meeting of the British Association, and there he was generally to be 
found in Section D. 
* Weldon states in bis applications for the Jodrell and the Linacre Chairs that he commenced the 
study of zoology under Lankester in 1877. 
