Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/639

 about them,’ issued in 1903, had occupied him many years, and was illustrated throughout with his own paintings and drawings. His account there of old English game fowl is probably the most valuable extant; but the rest of the work is for the modern expert of greater historic than of practical interest.

Weir was at the same time a practical horticulturist, being much interested in the cultivation of fruit trees, and for many years contributing articles and drawings to gardening periodicals. He was engaged by Messrs. Garrard & Co. to design the cups for Goodwood, Ascot, and other race-meetings for over thirty years. In 1891 he was granted a civil list pension of 100l.

Weir's unceasing industry left him no time for travel. He was apparently only once out of England, on a short visit to Andalusia, in Spain. His leisure was divided between his garden and his clubs. After long residence at Lyndhurst Road, Peckham, he built himself a house at Sevenoaks. His latest years were passed at Poplar Hall, Appledore, Kent. There he died on 3 Jan. 1906, and was buried at Sevenoaks. Weir was thrice married: (1) to Anne, eldest daughter of J. F. Herring, in 1845; (2) to Alice, youngest daughter of T. Upjohn, M.R.C.S. (d. 1898); and (3) to Eva, daughter of George Gobell of Worthing, Sussex, who survives him. He had two sons, Arthur Herring Weir (1847–1902) and John Gilbert Weir, and two daughters.



WELDON, WALTER FRANK RAPHAEL (1860–1906), zoologist, born at Highgate, London, on 15 March 1860, was elder son and second of the three children of [q. v.], journalist and chemist, by his wife Anne Cotton. His father frequently changed his place of residence and the sons received desultory education until 1873, when Weldon went as a boarder to Mr. Watson's school at Caversham near Reading. After spending nearly three years there he matriculated at London University in 1876, and in the autumn of the same year entered University College, London, with the intention of qualifying for a medical career. After a year's study at University College he was transferred to King's College, London, and on 6 April 1878 entered St. John's College, Cambridge, as a commoner, subsequently becoming an exhibitioner in 1879 and a scholar in 1881. At Cambridge Weldon came under the influence of Francis Maitland Balfour [q. v.] and abandoned medical studies for zoology. Though his undergraduate studies were interrupted by ill-health and by the sudden death of his brother Dante in 1881, he succeeded in gaining a first-class in the natural sciences tripos in that year, and in the autumn proceeded for a year's research work to the zoological station at Naples. Returning to Cambridge in Sept. 1882, he became successively demonstrator in zoology (1882–4), fellow of St. John's College (3 Nov. 1884), and university lecturer in invertebrate morphology (1884–91). After his marriage in 1883 he and his wife spent their vacations at such resorts as offered the best opportunities for the study of marine zoology. The most important of their expeditions was to the Bahamas in the autumn of 1886. As soon as the laboratory of the Marine Biological Association at Plymouth was sufficiently advanced, Weldon transferred his vacation work thither, and from 1888 to 1891 he was only in Cambridge for the statutory purposes of keeping residence and fulfilling his duties as university lecturer.

At Plymouth he began the series of original researches which established his reputation. Until 1888 he was engaged on the morphological and embryological studies which seemed to contemporary zoologists to afford the best hope of elucidating the problems of animal evolution. 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. He soon undertook a statistical study of the variation of the common shrimp, and after a year's hard work published his results in the 47th volume of the ‘Proceedings of the Royal Society,’ showing that a number of selected measurements made on several races of shrimps collected from different