A Mendelian Master
William Bateson, Naturalist. By Beatrice Bateson. (Cam. bridge University Press. 21s.)
THE name of William Bateson is growing and will grow in repute. It is certainly not yet as well known as his work and his personality deserve. What he did was to discover a new line of research that produced immediate practical results. He was in his degree the Francis Bacon of our days ; and inci- dentally:had as great a respect for letters and, of course, a much greater gift of purely scientific insight. He gave men perhaps of finer professional technique than himself a founda- tion of-philosophy.
One of the early symptoms of the streak of genius in him was his unhappiness as a schoolboy 1 - He . was not popular with: boys Or masters ; nor did he like himself, though his apparent " self-satisfaction " displeased his tutors. He wrote to his Mother from Rugby, in March; 1878: " I have read a great deal this term, and have been happier than usual —and I don't wait you to tell ,this,-but siimehow...I: never feel really hapliy suppose I never-shall." And in a letter to his father, in the same envelope : " I know I have no pluck. Fellows have kicked that out of me long ago."
Well, the free play of life, as the Greeks said, is th^ real source of happiness ; and Bateson, a, scientific observer by nature and of rather lonely moods, got no free play for his bias—the ground at school was too rough—till he reac14.d Cambridge, and eventually as student, as traveller, as pro- fessor, as head of a great research institution, found himself indeed.
His wife's memoir, which occupies a quarter of a volume filled out with some characteristic lectures and addresses,' is in its humble way a model : very simple, very honest, very modest ; and everything is well related. It is an admirable preface to the full-dress biography that must and will be written, for Bateson's work focussed and in great measure caused a definite advance in a vital branch of science, nOyt, known, largely owing to his suggestion, as genetics.
He had already inspired a' number of workers—many of the best were women—to study the laws of heredity on his ovyn
pbculiar lines. Great evolutionist, he 'had' detected a flaw in ifierwinian evolution as generally _interpreted, and was forpnmg-a novel sort of school. How eager on the:scent were his pick. of hOunds1 " Miss E. R. Saunders continued the Plant-breeding begun in our allotment garden ; Miss Sollas Aired- guinea-pigs in a field behind Newnham College ; Miss
Killby goats. Miss Wheldale worked on flower colours in _ .
antirrhinums ; Miss Marryat grew mirabilis Jalapa : Miss Durham hybridised mice in a kind of attic over the museums. In, Oxfordshire Mr. Staples-Browne bred pigeons ; Major Burst was busy with 'poultry and rabbits ; Mr. Doncaster crossed varieties of moth . . . ; Miss Darwin begun on trimorphie forms, with oxags."
A new method and aim had been set in motion ; and then one day in May, 1900, the rediscovered paper of the Abbe Mendel was put into Bateson's hand as he was on the way to a lecture. From that moment the happiness he thought in his sehooldays he would never attain was his indestructibly. His • line of thought and energy was justified. His little band were suddenly the vanguard of a great advance ; and they had ibund a bridge over the most difficult part of the country. Very soon the Cambridge Mendelians, with Mr. Punnett and • Sir Rowland Biffen as corps commanders, became faniotis the world over ; and the scientific study of heredity advanced at a great speed in a new direction ; and is now almost 'a household word with breeders of both plants and animals, and even with farmers.
Bateson's difficulties, both in winning acknowledgment and in getting money-for equipment—it took years to finance the building of a necessary greenhouse—make a rather pitiable story, but be had faith to remove greater mountains, and his
zeal conquered. He was-appointed to fill the chair of Biology at Cambridge, and after two years the opportunity 9f his dreams was offered him. What may be called a " Mendelian farm," the John Innes Horticultural Institute, had been established at Merton, and Bateson was offered and accepted the directorship. Be made One. characteristic condition : in spite of the claims of botany, he must be allowed to go on with his poultry-breeding experimata !
The charm of the volume lies the memoir. The very man, always lovable but never in a halo, is your companion. His letters are gay and very suggestive ; and sometimes you almost forget his absorption in science. Some of the addresses are already a little out-of-date, so quickly has science advanced ; but if anyone wishes a clear account of what the Mendelian laws mean and may mean in practice, he will find nothing better than I the address on. " Mendelian Heredity and its
Application to Man " ; his inaugural lecture on " The Method and Scope of Genetics." Though a naturalist by instinct and training, he spoke at least as ardently on the art of letters as on science ; and in this single regard his seven or eight lectures on education are better than Huxley's, to take the very highest standard of comparison ; for Huxley was so full of righteous indignation with what -he called " sensuous caterwauling " that he could not always preach scientific study without condemning linguistic art. The manner is not so vigorous as Huxley's, but it is singularly clear and persuasive. Not only specialists will read the lectures with pleasure and profit ; and as for Mendelism, it affects even the keeper of baelryard poultry and the grower of a line of garden peas.
W. BEACH TROIKAS.
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