LITERARY GOSSIP.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19332, 9 June 1928, Page 13

LITERARY GOSSIP.

One of the most fascinating of recent biographies (writes H.W.H. in the "Manchester Guardian") appears as the introduction to a volume of scientific papers issued by the Cambridge University Press. The titlo of the book is "William Bateson, Naturalist, ■' and its sub-title "His Essays and Addresses, Together With a Short Account of His Life." The prefatory memoir, running to about 100 pages, is written by liateson's widow, and depicts a singularity attractive personality. At itugby, where at that time nothing counted but the classics, ho was unsuccessful and unhappy. At Cambridge he discovered his aptitude for scientific research, which henceforth became the governing purpose of his life. He devoted himself especially to investigating tiie evolution of animals, and this task took him-to various parts of the world—to the shores of Chesapeako Bay, to tho lonely Khirgiz steppes (where ho studied the variation of auimals in correlation with the degrees of salinity in the lakes in which they lived), and to the waters of Northern Egypt. When at home, he sought material among the "fanciers" who breed canaries or mice or rabbits, and the collectors who accumulate hundreds of specimens of a common moth to find here and there an abnormal marking. Then ho established an experimental breeding-station in his own garden and at his own expense. Bateson was a pioneer, and at first the orthodox zoologists took no stock in his researches. It was long, indeed, before his own university realised the worth of what he was doing, so it provided him with neither laboratory nor assistants. The work was done independently by himself and his wife, together with a band of devoted pupils whom he had gathered around him.

Though he had-begun in the early 'Bo's, it was not until 1910, when lie was offered tho directorship of the John Innes Horticultural Institution at Morton Park, Surrey, that Bateson obtained an adequate equipment. He now had a competent staff, with ample provision of laboratories, greenhouses, and experimental grounds, but he had hardly completed his organisation when the war came and swept all his young men into military service. He pluckily did his best to keep the threads of investigation unbroken, and was still working out new ideas when he died suddenly, in 1926, at the age of 65. In his later years the general recognition paid to the scientific world to the value of his discoveries was some com-' pensation for the long period of struggle against discouragement and disappointment.

Happily, Bateson escaped that atrophy of non-scientific interests which Darwin deplored in his own case. He was an enthusiastic art lover. We find him, in a letter written from the wilds of Central Asia to his sister in Dresden, sending her suggestions as to how to look at a great picture. When on vacation ho spent much of his time in painting. In the intervals of scientific research his hobby was the collection of fabrics of the Near East, Japanese prints, Chinese paintings and drawings by the old masters. Hiß addresses, too, take a wide scope, many of them dealing with the bearing of his investigations on human affairs, as well as with various problems of education.

It is not often that- the life and character of a great novelist have boen used as material for a work of fiction. One remembers Goldsmith in. Mr Frankfort Moore's ''The Jessamy Bride," and Stevenson in "The' Cap of Youth," by Mr J. A. Steuart; and now "This Side Idolatry," by "Epliesian," tells the whole story of-Charles Dickens and claims to throw new light on his personality and career. As "EphesianJ' is said to have obtained hitherto unpublished material and to have consulted all available sources, not omitting even a "leading German authority,"- and it seems he deals with later phases of Dickens's domestic life, one takes it for granted that he has also consulted Dickens's surviving son and daughter.