Abstract
DR. RAYMOND PEARL is one of the younger generation of American biologists. He belongs to that school of naturalists who pursue, to begin with, the critical study of evolution, dealing not with its results alone but with its actual phenomena, who inquire into the essential facts and ways of working of selection, and who investigate accordingly all the problems, mathematical and other (especially those relating to “probability”), which are associated with variation and heredity. He belongs, that is to say, to the twin brotherhood of the experimentalists and statisticians, and like others of his school he has of late turned his investigations into very practical lines. A batch of Dr. Pearl's recent papers has come to hand, mostly on work done in connection with the Agricultural Experiment Station of the State of Maine. One-a very interesting one-is a general review of “The Selection Problem.” Others deal with statistical and biometric methods-for instance with class-frequencies, with the gamma function, and with other matters connected with “curve-fitting.” The rest of the batch are for the most part experimental studies, on eggnproduction or “inheritance of fecundity” in the common fowl, and on various problems of productiveness and of race-inheritance in cattle. Let us consider one only of these papers (or rather a part of one), which deals with “Animal Husbandry Investigations,” and in particular with the “Study and Analysis of Milk Records.” This is a very practical subject indeed, and all the more so at present, when questions of efficiency in food production are of the highest and most obvious importance.
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THOMPSON, D. The Statistics of the Dairy. Nature 100, 75–76 (1917). https://doi.org/10.1038/100075a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/100075a0