William Bateson, Naturalist

In choosing a subject for this Address I have availed myself of the kindly usage which permits a sectional president to divert the attention of his hearers into those lines of inquiry which he himself is accustomed to pursue. Nevertheless, in taking the facts of breeding for my theme, I am sensible that this privilege is subjected to a certain strain.

Heredity—and Variation too—are matters of which no naturalist likes to admit himself entirely careless. Everyone knows that, somewhere hidden among the phenomena denoted by these terms, there must be principles which, in ways untraced, are ordering the destinies of living things. Experiments in Heredity have thus, as I am told, a universal fascination. All are willing to offer an outward deference to these studies. The limits of that homage, however, are soon reached, and, though all profess interest, few are impelled to make even the moderate mental effort needed to apprehend what has been already done. It is understood that Heredity is an important mystery, and Variation another mystery. The naturalist, the breeder, the horticulturist, the sociologist, man of science and man of practice alike, has daily occasion to make and to act on assumptions as to Heredity and Variation, but many seem well content that such phenomena should remain for ever mysterious.

The position of these studies is unique. At once fashionable and neglected, nominally the central common ground of botany and zoology, of morphology and physiology, belonging specially to neither, this area is thinly tenanted.