Brief Historical Notice 39 



when several naturalists of the first rank were still occupied 

 with these problems, should have passed wholly unnoticed, 

 will always remain inexplicable, the more so as the Briinn 

 Society exchanged its publications with most of the 

 Academies of Europe, including both the Royal and 

 Linnean Societies. 



Naudin's views were well known to Darwin and are 

 discussed in Animals and Plants (ed. 1885, n., p. 23); but, 

 put forward as they were without full proof, they could not 

 command universal credence. Gartner, too, had adopted 

 opposite views; and Wichura, working with cases of 

 another order, had proved the fact that some hybrids breed 

 true. Consequently it is not to be wondered at that 

 Darwin was sceptical. Moreover, the Mendelian idea of 

 the "hybrid-character," or heterozygous form, was unknown 

 to him, a conception without which the hypothesis of dis- 

 sociation of characters is quite imperfect. 



Had Mendel's work come into the hands of Darwin, it 

 is not too much to say that the history of the development 

 of evolutionary philosophy would have been very different 

 from that which we have witnessed. 



