Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London - University Library

LIXXEAX SOCIETY OP LONDOX. Ill
dreary and desolate places. In tliis ]inpi)v view of his life's work
he was doubtless assisted by an uncoininon power of working
hard without any feeling of laborious effort. A friend of his has
remarked that lie had, like his father, a great facility for extracting
the kernel of a, memoir or book witliout wading through a very
large proportion of the words. He instinctively fastened upon
A\hat was essential, and made it his own, and would read through
a surprising amount of difficult and often dry literature without
any apparent effort. Moreover, he was an excellent linguist and
could not only read but speak several languages with ease and
fluency. The same faculties that made Weldon a brilliant
conversationist made him a lecturer oi" exceptional merit. He
had a strong dramatic instinct, and utilized it to the full in the
lecture-theatre and class-room. Aided by a natural aptitude for
drawing, lie would develop a subject both by speech and by finished
drawings on the black-board, till it seemed to "row under his
hand?, and the driest subjects of anatomy took life and became
replete with interest. His lectui'es at University College attracted
not only a hirge class of students but also many of his colleagues,
and his public courses of lectures at Oxford were no less suc-
cessful.
Weldon's zoological work falls naturally into two periods.
Trained at Cambridge under Prof, i'rancis Balfour, he naturally
came under the influence of the embryological and morphological
school of thought then dominant not only in England but on the
Continent. His earliest papers of importance were published in
IS8.3. One, on the early development of Lacerta rnuralis, is a
careful piece of embryological work, such as was produced in considerable
quantity at Cambridge at that period. The other, on
some points in the anatomy of Phcenicopterus and its allies, was
the outcome of Mork carried on in the Zoological Society's
Gardens.
Tor some years after taking bis degree Weldon followed the
prevailing trend of zoological thought, and hoped, as the best
zoologists then hoped, that the chief problems of animal evolution
would be on a fair way to solution as embryological evidence
accumulated. "With this object in view, he made frequent journeys
abroad to collect embryological material or to study the development
of some marine organism on the spot. His expedition to
the Bahamas was made with the pui-pose of studying the development
of the Tornaria larva of Balanoglossus. Between 18S3 and
1S89 he published several memoirs, all distinguished for careful
and methodical observation and considerable originality in morphological
speculation, but their contents need no special mention
in this place. AVhen he went to Plymouth in 1888 his purpose
was to study the development of the Crustacea, and for more tlian
a year he applied himself diligently to this work, though his
memoirs on the renal organs of the i)ecaiioda and the development
of the Common Shrimp did not appear till 1891 and 18112. But