Page:Mendel's principles of heredity; a defence.pdf/127
by Professor Weldon as conflicting facts—and lastly to suggest a few simple terms without which (or some equivalents) the discussion of such phenomena is difficult. Though it is impossible here to give an outline of facts and reasoning there set out at length, I feel that his article needs an immediate reply. Professor Weldon is credited with exceptional familiarity with these topics, and his paper is likely to be accepted as a sufficient statement of the case. Its value will only be known to those who have either worked in these fields themselves or have been at the trouble of thoughtfully studying the original materials.
The nature of Professor Weldon's article may be most readily indicated if I quote the summary of it issued in a paper of abstracts sent out with Review copies of the Part. This paper was most courteously sent to me by an editor of Biometrika in order to call my attention to the article on Mendel, a subject in which he knew me to be interested. The abstract is as follows.
"Few subjects have excited so much interest in the last year or two as the laws of inheritance in hybrids. Professor W. F. R. Weldon describes the results obtained by Mendel by crossing races of Peas which differed in one or more of seven characters. From a study of the work of other observers, and from examination of the 'Telephone' group of hybrids, the conclusion is drawn that Mendel's results do not justify any general statement concerning inheritance in cross-bred Peas. A few striking cases of other cross-bred plants and animals are quoted to show that the results of crossing cannot, as Mendel and his followers suggest, be predicted from a knowledge of the characters of the two parents crossed without knowledge of the more remote ancestry."
Such is the judgment a fellow-student passes on this mind