326 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



cation would throw light on the nature of cell division and of that 

 meristic process by which the repeated organs of living things are con- 

 stituted, and I have much confidence that in the course of the analysis 

 discoveries will be made bearing directly both on the general theory of 

 heredity and on the practical industry of breeding. 



In the application of science to the arts of agriculture, chemistry, 

 the foundation of sciences, very properly and inevitably came first, 

 while breeding remained under the unchallenged control of simple 

 common sense alone. The science of genetics is so young that when we 

 speak of what it also can do we must still for the most part ask for a 

 long credit; but I think that if there is full cooperation between the 

 practical breeder and the scientific experimenter, we shall be able to 

 redeem our bonds at no remotely distant date. In the mysterious prop- 

 erties of the living bodies of plants and animals there is an engine 

 capable of wonders scarcely yet suspected, waiting only for the con- 

 structive government of the human mind. Even in the seemingly rig- 

 orous tests and trials which have been applied to living material ap- 

 parently homogeneous, it is not doubtful that error has often come in 

 by reason of the individual genetic heterogeneity of the plants and ani- 

 mals chosen. A batch of fruit trees may be all of the same variety, but 

 the stocks on which the variety was grafted have hitherto been almost 

 always seminally distinct individuals, each with its own powers of 

 luxuriance or restriction, their own root-systems and properties so 

 diverse that only in experiments on a colossal scale can this diversity 

 be supposed to be levelled down. Even in a closely bred strain of cattle, 

 though all may agree in their " points," there may still be great genetic 

 diversity in powers of assimilation and rapidity of attaining maturity, 

 by which irregularities by no means negligible are introduced. The 

 range of powers which organic variation and genetic composition can 

 confer is so vast as to override great dissimilarities in the conditions 

 of cultivation. This truth is familiar to every raiser and grower who 

 knows it in the form that the first necessity is for him to get the right 

 breed and the right variety for his work. If he has a wheat of poor 

 yield, no amount of attention to cultivation or manuring will give a 

 good crop. An animal that is a bad doer will remain so in the finest 

 pasture. All praise and gratitude to the student of the conditions of 

 life, for he can do, and has done, much for agriculture, but the breeder 

 can do even more. 



When more than fifteen years ago the proposal to found a school of 

 agriculture in Cambridge was being debated, much was said of the im- 

 portance of the chemistry of soils, of researches into the physiological 

 value of food-stuffs, and of other matters then already prominent on 

 the scientific horizon. I remember then interpolating with an appeal 

 for some study of the physiology of breeding, which I urged should 



