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OCR Rendition - approximate
Correlation and Application of Statistics to Problems of Heredity 135 consider that scheme as finally dead. Now after thirty years it looks as if Down would be retained as a national possession. One may hope that it will be put to as good and fitting a purpose as Galton proposed for it. He has left a lengthy paper dealing with the work he considered the Biological Farm should imdertake; it is based on the suggestions he received from many quarters, modified by his own ideas. It is a scheme for "Further 'accurate observations on Variation, Heredity, Hybridism, and other phenomena that would elucidate the Evolution of Plants and Animals." The matter is arranged under 16 headings, and it is sad to consider that, although more than thirty years have passed since the scheme was drafted, but little has been done to solve the problems therein suggested. It is impossible to print the full manuscript here, but some idea of what it deals with may be judged from its table of Contents "A. Preparatory. (1) Procedure (especially emphasising the need for continuity in observation and for secular experiments). (2) Cooperation (Institutions and Individuals). (3) Breeds suitable for Experiments (necessity for stores of pure stocks of small animals). (4) Place for Station (Down, and existing establishments). B. Heredity as affected by and related to: (5) Close interbreeding, Panmixia, Prepotency. (6) Hybridism. (7) Telegony. (8) Acquired modifications in parent. (9) Mental influence on Mother ("Jacobise" in a variety of ways). (10) Instinct (nest building by birds, who have never seen the nest of their species; directive instinct in dogs, taken to unknown place and watched from a distance by a stranger). (11) Variations, "Sports" and their intensity of inheritance. (12) Natural and Physiological Selection. (13) Parthenogenesis. (14) Fertility (many problems stated). (15) Sex and its causes. (16) Gestation." The bundle of papers in which this and other schemes and letters from innumerable correspondents are included is labelled by Galton: "Old Papers concerning the Evolution Committee of the R. Soc. of probably no present value. Might be useful if a Darwinian Institute were ever founded." "Of probably no present value"-what a criticism of the biologists of 1890-1900! Here, as in Experimental Psychology, Galton was ahead of his age, and few have recognised how much even by raising these questions, he stimulated that movement for experimental biology, which the present generation of biologists believes was unthought of by their Victorian predecessors. Thus came to an end Galton's plan for an experimental station for evolution; it was another illustration of the futility of working through ill-assorted committees. I say came to an end, but hardly in Galton's mind. It must I think have been in 1903, when in,n the summer vacation the biometricians were employed on their summer tasks at Peppard and Galton was of the company, that the matter again arose. One evening he asked his two lieutenants to prepare a draft scheme for a biological farm, to state its size, staff, equipment, its probable cost and annual expenditure for maintenance and experimentation. Weldon and I talked the matter over, and felt that although Galton was well-to-do, he was not so wealthy, that to run a biological farm might not deprive him of some of the easements necessary to his age. We therefore determined to estimate the cost of the farm on the scale of. maximum effectiveness. It was a pious fraud, but the suggestion of a biological farm was never again referred to, and Galton's thoughts of increasing human knowledge soon turned to less expensive projects.
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