364 PLANT HYBRIDIZATION BEFORE MENDEL 



"In all these three cases there is discontinuity, the intermediates be- 

 tween the varieties being absent or relatively scarce. Nevertheless, on 

 examination, it is found that the discontinuity is not maintained in the 

 same way in the different cases. The transmitting powers of the one va- 

 riety in respect of the other are quite different in each case, and it must, 

 I think, be admitted that we have here a fact of great physiological 

 significance. In each of the three cases enumerated, the two varieties are 

 seen to stand towards each other in a different relation, and in each the 

 mechanism of inheritance works differently." (p. 65.) 



Bateson finally closes with the following significant comment 

 upon the contention that the results of crossing are uncertain, 

 sometimes one result occurring, and sometimes another : 



"This, of course, merely means that the problem must he studied on 

 a scale sufficiently large to give a statistical result. There is here an al- 

 most untouched ground on which the properties of specific characters 

 can be investigated." (Italics inserted.) (p. 66.) 



On May 8, 1900, not quite a year after the address referred to 

 above, and almost immediately after the appearance of the papers 

 from Holland, Germany, and Austria on the subject of the Men- 

 delian investigations. Professor Bateson presented to the Royal 

 Horticultural Society, the results of the then recently published 

 reports of De Vries, Correns, and von Tschermak, together with 

 an outline of Mendel's results, in a lecture entitled "Problems of 

 heredity as a subject for horticultural investigation," published 

 in the Journal of the Society, Vol. 25, pp. 54-61, in which he con- 

 cludes as follows regarding the Mendelian results : 



"The numbers with which Mendel worked, though large, were not 

 large enough to give really smooth results ; but, with a few rather 

 marked exceptions, the observations are remarkably consistent, and the 

 approximation to the numbers demanded by the law is greatest in those 

 cases where the largest numbers were used. When we consider, besides, 

 that Tschermak and Correns announce confirmation in the case of Pisum, 

 and De Vries adds the evidence of his long series of observations on other 

 species and orders, there can be no doubt that Mendel's law is a substan- 

 tial reality; though whether some of the cases that depart most widely 

 from it can be brought within the terms of the same principle or not 

 can only be decided by further experiments." (p. 59.) 



This address may be said to constitute the first public intro- 

 duction of Mendel's results to English-speaking workers by an 

 investigator of standing. Bateson followed soon after with a com- 

 plete translation of Mendel's paper (Jour. Roy. Hort. Soc, 1901, 

 Vol. 26, pp. 1-32^), and later (1902) by its publication in the 



1 Mendel's paper, "Experiments in Plant Hybridization," appears on 



