Gilbert Charles Bourne

“ But the more he became acquainted with animals living in their natural environment the more he became convinced that the current methods of laboratory research were incapable of giving an answer to the questions of variation, inheritance, and natural selection that forced themselves on his attention. In 1889, when Galton's recently published work on natural inheritance came into his hands, he perceived that the statistical methods explained and recommended in that book might be extended to the study of animals. ”

“ In addition to these and other exacting lines of research and the ordinary duties of his chair, Weldon took a leading part in the work of the association for promoting a professorial university for London, and his friends, fearing that he was over-straining his energies, hailed with relief his election to the Linacre professorship of comparative anatomy at Oxford in February 1899. But though Oxford afforded opportunities for greater intellectual leisure, Weldon disdained to make use of them. ”

“ His leisure hours at Oxford were spent in long bicycle rides, during which he studied the fauna of the neighbourhood; his vacations were spent in journeys to various parts of the continent, where he worked at his statistical calculations and collected material for fresh lines of research. He added to his labours by undertaking the co-editorship of ‘Biometrika,’ a new scientific journal devoted to his special branch of study, and contributed to it twelve separate original and critical papers between 1901 and 1906. ”