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AUSTRALIA, 1914.

INAUGURAL ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT,
Prof. WILLIAM BATESON, M.A., F.R.S.

PART I.-Melbourne.

knowledge of genetics is of paramount importance in any attempt to understand the nature of living things has only been realised quite lately even by naturalists, and with casual exceptions the laity still know nothing of the matter. Historians debate the past of the human species, and statesmen order its present or profess to guide its future as if the animal Man, the unit of their calculations, with his vast diversity of powers, were a homogeneous material, which can be multiplied like shot.

The reason for this neglect lies in ignorance and mis. understanding of the nature of Variation; for not until the fact of congenital diversity is grasped, with all that it imports, does knowledge of the system of hereditary transmission stand out as a primary necessity in the construction of any theory of Evolution, or any scheme of human polity.

The first full perception of the significance of variation we owe to Darwin. The present generation of evolutionists realises perhaps more fully than did the scientific world in the last century that the theory of Evolution had occupied the thoughts of many and tound acceptance with not a few before ever the "Origin" appeared. We have come also to the conviction that the principle of Natural Selection cannot have been the chief factor in delimiting the species of animals and plants, such as we now with fuller know. ledge see them actually to be. We are even more sceptical as to the validity of that appeal to changes in the conditions of life as direct causes of modification, upon which latterly at all events Darwin laid much emphasis. But that he was the first to provide a body of fact demonstrating the variability of living things, whatever be its causation, can never be questioned.

THE Outstanding feature of this Meeting must be the fact that we are here-in Australia. It is the function of a President to tell the Association of advances in science, to speak of the universal rather than of the particular or the temporary. There will be other opportunities of expressing the thoughts which this event must excite in the dullest heart, but it is right that my first words should take account of those achievements of organisation and those acts of national generosity by which it has come to pass that we are assembled in this country. Let us, too, on this occasion, remember that all the effort, and all the goodwill, that binds Australia to Britain would have been powerless to bring about such a result had it not been for those advances in science which have given man a control There are some older collections of evidence, chiefly of the forces of Nature. For we are here by virtue of the work of the French school, especially of Godron ("De the feats of genius of individual men of science, giant-l'Espèce et des Races dans les Etres Organisés," 1859)— variations from the common level of our species; and since I am going soon to speak of the significance of indi- | vidual variation, I cannot introduce that subject better than by calling to remembrance the line of pioneers in chemistry, in physics, and in engineering, by the working of whose rare or, if you will, abnormal-intellects a meeting of the British Association on this side of the globe has been made physically possible.

I have next to refer to the loss within the year of Sir David Gill, a former President of this Association, himself one of the outstanding great. His greatness lay in the power of making big foundations. He built up the Cape Observatory; he organised international geodesy; ne conceived and carried through the plans for the photography of the whole sky, a work in which Australia is bearing a conspicuous part. Astronomical observation is now organised on an international scale, and of this great scheme Gul was the heart and soul. His labours have ensured a base from which others will proceed to discovery otherwise impossible. His name will be long remembered with veneration and gratitude.

As the subject of the Addresses which I am to deliver here and in Sydney I take Heredity. I shall attempt to give the essence of the discoveries inade by Mendelian or analytical methods of study, and I shall ask you to contemplate the deductions which these physiological facts suggest in application both to evolutionary theory at large and to the special case of the natural history of human Society.

Recognition of the significance of heredity is modern. The term itself in its scientific sense is no older than Herbert Spencer. Animals and plants are formed as pieces of living material split from the body of the parent organisms. Their powers and faculties are fixed in their physiological origin. They are the consequence of a genetic process, and yet it is only lately that this genetic process has become the subject of systematic research and experiment. The curiosity of naturalists has of course always been attracted to such problems; but that accurate

and I would mention also the almost forgotten essay of Wollaston ("On the Variation of Species," 1856)—these, however, are only fragments in comparison. Darwin regarded variability as a property inherent in living things, and eventually we must consider whether this conception 18 well founded; but postponing that inquiry for present, we may declare that with him began a general recognition of variation as a phenomenon widely occurring in Nature.

the

It a population consists of members which are not alike but differentiated, how will their characteristics be distriouted among their offspring? This is the problem which the modern student of heredity sets out to investigate. Formerly it was hoped that by the simple inspection of embryological processes the modes of heredity might be ascertained, the actual mechanism by which the offspring is formed from the body of the parent. In that endeavour a noble pile of evidence has been accumulated. All that can be made visible by existing methods has been seen, but we come little if at all nearer to the central mystery. We see nothing that we can analyse further-nothing that can be translated into terms less inscrutable than the physiological events themselves. Not only does embryology give no direct aid, but the failure of cytology is, so tar as I can judge, equally complete. The chromosomes of nearly related creatures may be utterly different both in number, size, and form. Only one piece of evidence encourages the old hope that a connection might be traceable between the visible characteristics of the body and those of the chromosomes. I refer of course to the accessory chromosome, which in many animals distinguishes the spermatozoon about to form a female in fertilisation. Even it however cannot be claimed as the cause of sexual dıfferentiation, for it may be paired in forms closely allied to those in which it is unpaired or accessory. The distinction may be present or wanting, like any other secondary sexual character. Indeed, so long as no one can show consisten distinctions between the cytological characters of somatic tissues in the same individual we can scarcely expect to perceive such distinctions between the chromosomes of the various types.

For these methods of attack we now substitute another, less ambitious, perhaps, because less comprehensive, but not less direct. If we cannot see how a fowl by its egg and its sperm gives rise to a chicken or how a Sweet Pea from its ovule and its pollen grain produces another Sweet Pea, we at least can watch the system by which the ditferences between the various kinds of fowls or between the various kinds of Sweet Peas are distributed among the offspring. By thus breaking the main problem up into its parts we give ourselves fresh chances. This analytical study we call Mendelian because Mendel was the first to apply it. To be sure, he did not approach the problem by any such line of reasoning as I have sketched. His object was to determine the genetic definiteness of species; but though in his writings he makes no mention of inheritance it is clear that he had the extension in view. By cross-breeding he combined the characters of varieties in mongrel individuals and set himself to see how these characters would be dis tributed among the individuals of subsequent generations. Until he began this analysis nothing but the vaguest answers to such a question had been attempted. The existence of any orderly system of descent was never even suspected. In their manifold complexity human characteristics seemed to follow no obvious system, and the fact was taken as a fair sample of the working of heredity. Misconception was especially brought in by describing descent in terms of "blood." The common speech uses expressions such as consanguinity, pure-blooded, half blood, and the like, which call up a misleading picture to the mind. Blood is in some respects a fluid, and thus it is supposed thut this fluid can be both quantitatively and qualitatively diluted with other bloods, just as treacle can be diluted with water. Blood in primitive physiology being the peculiar vehicle of life, at once its essence and its corporeal abode, these ideas of dilution and compounding of characters in the commingling of bloods inevitably suggest that the ingredients of the mixture once combined are inseparable, that they can be brought together in any relative amounts, and in short that in heredity we are concerned mainly with a quantitative problem. Truer notions of genetic physiology are given by the Hebrew expression "seed." It we speak of a man as "of the blood-royal " we think at once of plebeian dilution, and we wonder how much of the royal fluid is likely to be "in his veins "; but if we say he is "of the seed of Abraham" we feel something of the permanence and indestructibility of that germ which can be divided and scattered among all nations, but remains recognisable in type and characteristics after

4000 years.

Now the ordinary genealogical trees, such as those which the stud-books provide in the case of the domestic animals, or the Heralds' College provides in the case of man, tell nothing of all this. Such methods of depicting descent cannot even show the one thing they are devised to show-purity of "blood." For at last we know the physiological meaning of that expression. An organism is pure-bred when it has been formed by the union in fertilisation of two germ-cells which are alike in the factors they bear; and since the factors for the several characteristics are independent of each other, this question of purity must be separately considered for each of them. A man, for example, may be pure-bred in respect of his musical ability and cross-bred in respect of the colour of his eyes or the shape of his mouth. Though we know nothing of the essential nature of these factors, we know a good deal of their powers. They may confer height, colour, shape, instincts, powers both of mind and body; Indeed, so many of the attributes which animals and plants possess that we feel justified in the expectation that with continued analysis they will be proved to be responsible for most if not all of the differences by which the varying individuals of any species are distinguished from each other. I will not assert that the greater differences which characterise distinct Species are due generally to such independent factors, but that is the conclusion to which the available evidence points. All this is now so well understood, and has been so often demonstrated and expounded, that details of evidence are now superfluous.

But for the benefit of those who are unfamiliar with such work let me briefly epitomise its main features and consequences. Since genetic factors are definite things, either present in or absent from any germ-cell, the individual may be either "pure-bred " for any particular factor, or its absence, if he is constituted by the union of two germcells both possessing or both destitute of that factor. If the individual is thus pure, all his germ-cells will in that respect be identical, for they are simply bits of the similar germ-cells which united in fertilisation to produce the parent organism. We thus reach the essential principle, that an organism cannot pass on to offspring a factor which it did not itself receive in fertilisation. Parents, therefore, which are both destitute of a given factor can only produce offspring equally destitute of it; and, on the contrary, parents both pure-bred for the presence of a tactor produce offspring equally pure-bred for its presence. Whereas the germ-cells of the pure-bred are all alike, those of the cross-bred, which results from the union of dissimilar germ-cells, are mixed in character. Each positive factor segregates from its negative opposite, so that some germ-cells carry the factor and some do not. Once the factors have been identified by their effects, the average composition of the several kinds of families formed from the various matings can be predicted.

I knew a breeder who had a chest containing bottles of coloured liquids by which he used to illustrate the relation ships of his dogs, pouring from one to another and titrating them quantitatively to iliustrate their pedigrees. Galton was beset by the same kind of mistake when he promul Only those who have themselves witnessed the fixed gated his "Law of Ancestral Heredity." With modern operations of these simple rules can feel their full signifiresearch all this has been cleared away. The allotment of cance. We come to look behind the simulacrum of the characteristics among offspring is not accomplished by the individual body and we endeavour to disintegrate its exudation of drops of a tincture representing the sum of features into the genetic elements by whose union the the characteristics of the parent organism, but by a process body was formed. Set out in cold general phrases such of cell-division, in which numbers of these characters, or discoveries may seem remote from ordinary life. Become ratner the elements upon which they depend, are sorted familiar with them and you will find your outlook on the out among the resulting germ-cells in an orderly fashion. world has changed. Watch the effects of segregation What these elements, or factors as we call them, are we among the living things with which you have to dodo not know. That they are in some way directly trans- plants, fowls, dogs, horses, that mixed concourse of mitted by the material of the ovum and of the sperma-humanity we call the English race, your friends' children, tozoon is obvious, but it seems to me unlikely that they your own children, yourself-and however firmly imaginaare in any simple or literal sense material particles. I tion be restrained to the bounds of the known and the suspect rather that their properties depend on some proved, you will feel something of that range of insight phenomenon of arrangement. However that may be, into Nature which Mendelism has begun to give. The analytical breeding proves that it is according to the dis- question is often asked whether there are not also in tribution of these genetic factors, to use a non-committal operation systems of descent quite other than those conterm. that the characters of the offspring are decided. templated by the Mendelian rules. I myself have expected The first business of experimental genetics is to determine such discoveries, but hitherto none have been plainly their number and interactions, and then to make an analysis demonstrated. It is true we are often puzzled by the of the various types of life. failure of a parental type to reappear in its completeness

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