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29 longer satisfy the enquirer. He wishes to ascertain what are the facts. Speaking at the British Association in 1897 Sedgwick says, "The phenomenon of genetic variation forms the bed rock upon which all the theories of evolution must rest, and it is only by a study of variations; of their nature and cause, that we can ever hope to obtain any real insight into the actual way in which evolution has taken place". Reference has already been made to the useful and promising work that is already being done on the study of variations. An important field of enquiry is to find out what is the effect of changed conditions in asexual reproductions. For here there is an opportunity of studying the result of the of modification  the reproductive system without the complications introduced by the act of conjugation.

Some advances have been made also in regard to the problems of Heredity. Galton in his has by the application of statistical methods to large populations through many generations shown that there is a  by which there is a tendency to maintain an average set of characters in the stock. He has also enumerated a (Proc.Roy.Soc.Vol.61) according to which the contribution of each progenitor to the total heritage of the offspring is calculated. This law has been corroborated and slightly corrected by Karl Pearson (Proc.Roy.Soc.Vol.62). These are the first systematic attempts to en laws of heredity