Brief Historical Notice 37 



where it is simply stated that Mendel's numerous experi- 

 ments on Pis-urn gave results similar to those obtained 

 by Knight, but that he believed he had found constant 

 numerical ratios among the types produced by hybridisation. 

 In the same work a similar brief reference is made to the 

 paper on Hieracium. 



It may seem surprising that a work of such importance 

 should so long have failed to find recognition and to become 

 current in the world of science. It is true that the journal 

 in which it appeared is scarce, but this circumstance has 

 seldom long delayed general recognition. The cause is 

 unquestionably to be found in that neglect of the experi- 

 mental study of the problem of Species which supervened 

 on the general acceptance of the Darwinian doctrines. The 

 problem of Species, as Kolreuter, Gartner, Naudin, Wichura, 

 and the other hybridists of the middle of the nineteenth 

 century conceived it, attracted thenceforth no workers. The 

 question, it was imagined, had been answered and the 

 debate ended. No one felt much interest in the matter. 

 A host of other lines of work were suddenly opened up, and 

 in 1865 the more original investigators naturally found 

 those new methods of research more attractive than the 

 tedious observations of the hybridisers, whose inquiries 

 were supposed, moreover, to have led to no definite result. 



Nevertheless the total neglect of such a discovery is 

 not easy to account for. Those who are acquainted with 

 the literature of this branch of inquiry will know that the 

 French Academy offered a prize in 1861 to be awarded in 

 1862 on the subject " Etudier les Hybrldes vegetaux au 

 point de vue de leur fecondite et de la perpetuite de leurs 

 caracteres." This subject was doubtless chosen with 

 reference to the experiments of Godron of Nancy and 

 Naudin, then of Paris. Both these naturalists competed, 



