THE METHODS AND SCOPE OF GENETICS CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS London: FETTER LANE, E.C. C. F. CLAY, MANAGER [Illustration: Logo] Edinburgh: 100, PRINCES STREET Berlin: A. ASHER AND CO. Leipzig: F. A. BROCKHAUS New York: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS Bombay and Calcutta: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD. _All rights reserved_ THE METHODS AND SCOPE OF GENETICS _AN INAUGURAL LECTURE DELIVERED 23 OCTOBER 1908_ by W. BATESON, M.A., F.R.S. PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE Cambridge: at the University Press 1912 _First Edition 1908_ _Reprinted 1912_ PREFATORY NOTE The Professorship of Biology was founded in 1908 for a period of five years partly by the generosity of an anonymous benefactor, and partly by the University of Cambridge. The object of the endowment was the promotion of inquiries into the physiology of Heredity and Variation, a study now spoken of as Genetics. It is now recognized that the progress of such inquiries will chiefly be accomplished by the application of experimental methods, especially those which Mendel's discovery has suggested. The purpose of this inaugural lecture is to describe the outlook over this field of research in a manner intelligible to students of other parts of knowledge. W. B. _28 October, 1908_ THE METHODS AND SCOPE OF GENETICS The opportunity of addressing fellow-students pursuing lines of inquiry other than his own falls seldom to a scientific man. One of these rare opportunities is offered by the constitution of the Professorship to which I have had the honour to be called. That Professorship, though bearing the comprehensive title "of Biology," is founded with the understanding that the holder shall apply himself to a particular class of physiological problems, the study of which is denoted by the term Genetics. The term is new; and though the problems are among the oldest which have vexed the human mind, the modes by which they may be successfully attacked are also of modern invention. There is therefore a certain fitness in the employment of this occasion for the deliverance of a discourse explaining something of the aims of Genetics and of the methods by which we trust they may be reached.