340 
On the Fimdmtiental Conceptions of Biology 
to have done ? Not at all ! I did not choose to leave them out of account 
because I recognised how a certain type of critic might think he saw his 
opportunity. This is what I wrote in August 1900 — and Mr Bateson's paper 
was read in February 1901 : — 
" In summing up my results and comparing them with those obtained for 
fraternal correlation by my co-workers and myself I felt some difficulty. If I made 
a selection of what I considered the best homotypic correlation series, and the best 
fraternal correlation, I might lay myself open to the charge of selecting statistics 
with a view to the demonstration of a theoretical law laid down beforehand. 
Accordingly I determined to include all my homotypic results, except tliose for the 
absolute dimensions of mushroom gills and ivy leaves, where it was pretty evident 
that we had to a greater or lesser degree an influence exerted by the growth 
factor" {Phil. Trans. Vol. 197, A, p. 355). 
Now what about these mushroom gills and ivy leaves ? Why, that they were 
measured with the definite intention of using only the ratio or index for homotyposis, 
because we were already very familiar with the correlation due to growth. When 
one has been in the habit of forming correlation tables between age and growth 
and knows that this correlation can be as large as '5, one does not blindly confuse 
the growth and the homotyposis factors. What would Mr Bateson have said if I 
had determined fraternal correlation in head length between minor brothers 
without reducing them first by means of the growth correlation table to a standard 
age ? Yet how does Mr Bateson refer to my necessary exclusion of the ivy leaf and 
mushroom absolute measurements, an exclusion designed ah initio* from the homo- 
typic values ? 
"The values found range from llZ'i to '8607. Reasons are put forward for 
excluding some of the highest and for doubting the validity of others, especially 
some of the lower ones " (p. 196). 
Take this in conjunction with the passage in which Mr Bateson speaks of my 
having been compelled to pick and choose my results and I assert that the impres- 
sion formed upon the reader will be an entirely erroneous one. These passages 
would no doubt have been modified had Mr Bateson not hastened to print and 
read his paper before anything but the abstract of my own was available for 
criticism. Nothing has been chosen or excluded after we knew what its homo- 
typosis was, neither Nigella nor hart's-tongue nor woodruff, they are all used for the 
average. The table stands exactly as it was intended it should stand when the 
material was settled upon and before the constants were calculated. 
Mr Bateson cannot maintain logically a double position : (i) that it is wrong to 
exclude differentiated organs and (ii) that I pick and choose. For the organs 
which I know to be differentiated have actually been included because I knew 
beforehand what sort of criticism my paper would rouse. 
" "This series was originally undertaken by Dr E. Warren, using as bis character the index or ratio 
of length to maximum breadth. It was hoped that in this manner the growth factor might be fairly 
well eliminated," Phil. Trans. Vol. 197, A, p. 240, see also pp. 338, 339. 
