was the first Parsi M.A. of Bombay University, and coming to London to read at Lincoln's Inn was also the first Parsi to be called (1868) to the bar. With Dadabhai Naoroji he founded the organization which grew into the present East India Association. Returning to Bombay he rapidly made a name as an advocate and built up a fortune at the bar. Appointed in 1869 as Justice of the Peace, to participate in municipal affairs, he eagerly pro- moted the reform of civic administration begun in 1872, from which date he served on the new Bombay Corporation till his death. Through these 43 years he exercised wisely an extraor- dinary personal ascendency in that body and was four times president. He was also the dominant non-official figure in the Bombay Legislature, where he served for over 30 years. He represented its non-official members on the Supreme Legislature for three triennial terms to 1902, when he made way for G. K. Gokhale. One of the founders of the Indian National Congress, he presided at the Calcutta session of 1890. A stout opponent of violent methods, he did perhaps more than anyone else to stave off the complete triumph the extreme section in the Congress secured soon after his death. Most influential in the affairs of the Bombay University, he was in the last few months of his life vice-chancellor. A great orator, with remarkable gifts for man- aging men, his steadfast devotion to local and provincial reform and progress, while not irresponsive to wider calls, had a most val- uable influence in moulding nascent Indian public life. Created a C.I.E. in 1894, he was advanced to the knighthood of the Or- der 10 years later. In the last year of his life, in spite of declining health, he threw his great influence strongly on the side of full Indian cooperation with the rest of the Empire in the World War. He died in Bombay Nov. 5 1915.
See the political biography by H. P. Mody (2 vols. 1921). Much light is thrown on Mehta's services to his native city in Rise and Growth of Bombay Municipal Government (1913), by his most intimate friend and co-worker, Sir Dinshaw Wacha. (F. H. BR.)
MEIGHEN, ARTHUR (1874- ), Canadian statesman, was born June 16 1874 at Anderson, Perth co., Ontario. After studying law, he practised for some years in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba. He was elected to the Canadian House of Commons in the general election of 1908, and was reflected in 1911 and 1917. In 1913 he was appointed Solicitor-General in the Borden administration and in 1915 was sworn of the Privy Council for Canada. He became Secretary of State and Minister of Mines in 1917, and the same year was made Minister of the Interior and Superintendent-General for Indian Affairs. In 1918 he went to England with the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Borden, to attend the Imperial Conference. Following the retirement of Sir Robert Borden in 1919 he was chosen to succeed him as leader of the Union Government. He became Prime Minister and Secretary of State for External Affairs July 10 1920, and was appointed a member of the King's Privy Council in October of the same year. He attended the conference of Prime Ministers in London in June 1921. But he resigned office on the heavy defeat of his party at the elections in December.
MELBA, MADAME [NELLIE PORTER ARMSTRONG] (1850- ), British singer (see 18.90), was the organizer of many charitable efforts during the World War, and collected considerable sums for war charities. In 1918 she was created D.B.E.
MELDOLA, RAPHAEL (1849-1913), British chemist, was born at Islington July 19 1849. Educated at the Royal School of Mines, he became a lecturer at the Royal College of Science, South Kensington, and subsequently professor of chemistry at Finsbury Technical College in 1885, and did valuable work in connexion with the manufacture of coal-tar dyes (see 3.82 and 19.168). He was also interested in biological questions, such as the colouring of butterflies and animals (see 6.733). He died in London Nov. 16 1915.
See Raphael Meldola: Reminiscences of his worth and work by those mho knew him. Edited by James Marchant (1916).
MELLON, ANDREW WILLIAM (1855- ), American banker and public official, was born in Pittsburgh, Pa., March 24 1853. After graduating from the university of Pittsburgh he entered the banking house of Thomas Mellon & Sons and later became a partner. The business developed into three strong institutions, the Mellon National Bank, the Union Trust Company, and the Union Savings Bank, all of Pittsburgh. Mr. Mellon was elected president of the first mentioned in 1902, and was vice-president of the other two. In the 'eighties he was interested in the development of the coal, coke and iron industry of Western Pennsylvania and was often associated in various enterprises with Henry C. Frick. He founded the town of Donora, Pa., and established a large steel mill there. He built the first independent pipe line, in competition with the Standard Oil Co., through Pennsylvania. He was a director in numerous corporations, and was a conservative Republican, opposing the League of Nations. In 1921 he was appointed Secretary of the Treasury in the Cabinet of President Harding.
MENDELISM (see 18.115). The progress in physiological science made possible by Mendelian methods is described in the articles GENETICS and SEX. In the present article the influence of those discoveries on the development of biological thought and their application to the practice of breeding are considered.
(1) Analysis. Modern genetics introduces into biology a factorial or analytical conception of organisms, which are now recognized as largely possessing attributes behaving as units and as such capable of being detached and transferred to any other type with which cross-breeding can be effected. The limits governing this principle of segregation and recombination are still undetermined.
(2) Phcnotype and Genotype. In former considerations of biological problems no account was taken of the consequences of the fact that each of the higher organisms is, in modern language, diploid, that is to say, a double structure containing factorial contributions derived respectively from the haploid or simple male and female cells which in fertilization united to produce it. Since some of these factors inhibit the effect of others, and since some give no sign of their presence in the organism unless other complementary elements are also present, the appearance of an organism is an imperfect guide to its genetic potentialities. We have thus to distinguish the organism as it outwardly appears to be from that which it actually is by genetic composition, a distinction which Johannsen has conveniently expressed by the use of the terms phenotype for the former and genotype for the latter. Systematic or classificatory works, both zoological and botanical, abound with errors arising from want of appreciation of this fundamental distinction, which must constantly be remembered, especially, for instance, whenever the significance of varietal or intermediate forms has to be estimated.
(3) Variability. Evidence formerly regarded as proof of abundant contemporary variability in the species of animals and plants must be submitted to searching tests before it can be so accepted. Observations of variability once deemed adequate are now seen to be capable of quite different constructions. Proof that an observed departure from type is a contemporary genetic variation can only be obtained in exceptional cases which have been critically observed under experimental conditions. Putative variation is commonly nothing but the recurrence of a recessive form, or the emergence of some other segregant, from a stock genetically impure; more often still the direct product of a cross. The existence, therefore, of a multitude of varietal forms, so far from simply providing a convenient basis upon which a theory of the evolution of species can be erected, becomes itself an antecedent problem; and instead of asking, as they used to do, how the species have been built up out of the varieties, biologists are rather concerned to discover whence and by what process these variations have come to exist. The belief that substantial genetic change commonly accrues by summation of impalpable differences has been generally abandoned as devoid of evidential foundation. Such differences are mostly fluctuational, largely dependent on circumstance rather than on genetical units, and hence not transmissible. Summation, when a genuine phenomenon, is a consequence of purification or the attainment of homozygosis. The idea that a characteristic could in any other way increase as a result of selection is out of place in an exact or even a logical science.
