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West Indies, etc. A programme of more than 50 papers was presented, 

 a number being sent from Germany, Austria, France, Holland, and 

 England, All of the papers are to be published in full in the proceedings 

 of the New York Horticultural Society, which it is hoped will appear 

 early in the coming year. A brief account is here given of a number of 

 papers which were presented at the Conference. 



Prof. W. Bateson, of Cambridge University, England, considered the 

 Practical Aspects of the New Discoveries in Hei-edity. He briefly re- 

 viewed Mendel's law of heredity, and pointed out some of the great 

 advances which have been made since the enunciation of that law. Tn 

 general it was stated that while great differences may exist in plants and 

 animals, hybrids in their first generation represent the characters of one 

 parent and not of both. The author believed that the time would soon 

 come when the fundamental principles of plant and animal breeding 

 •would be known, so that the breeder would be able to control his work 

 instead of depending upon chance results. For the practical man it is 

 impossible to always determine the characters which exist in the parent 

 plants. As an example, it is cited that green peas may be due to the 

 union of 2 green varieties, of yellow and green varieties, or of 2 yellows 

 all of which tends to complicate the special hereditary characteristics. 

 The frequent occurrence of bearded wheats in plats of beardless varieties 

 was mentioned, and their presence was attributed to the probable fact 

 that the beardless variety had been developed from a bearded form, 

 the plants still containing some of the germ cells of the bearded 

 ancestors. The predominance of the recessive germs resulted in the 

 appearance of bearded forms, and the presence and influence of recessive 

 germs can be eliminated only gradually. Species, according to the 

 author, are not to be considered necessarily fixed or of loug duration. 

 Crosses or, as the author called them, heterozygote forms do not usually 

 reproduce their kinds, but often result in reversion to ancestral types. 

 A number of examples were cited of reversions which have taken place 

 in the sweet pea, giant lavender, primulas, Andalusian fowls, etc., which 

 show that in a number of instances the forms are not readily fixed, 

 being the result of complex crosses that are for the rpost part infertile, 



A paper by C. C. Hurst, entitled Notes on Mendel'.s Methods of Plant 

 Breeding, was read by the secretary. Mendel was apparently the first 

 to recognize the necessity of considering each single character on its 

 own merits. In selecting constant characters, he avoided confusion by 

 crossing only constant and fixed races of plants, each of which had been 

 the product of repeated self-fertilization. If plants are chosen for 

 crossing, the ancestry of which is unknown, the resulting offspring will 

 either be incomparable or incomprehensible. The writer cited his 

 experiments with orchids in which by choosing constant characters he 

 had almost entirely succeeded in eliminating the possibility of reversion. 

 It is stated tiiat some of the apparent exceptions to Mendel's results 

 are probably to be attributed to the crosbing of species which were 

 not constant in character. The consideration of differential characters 

 was briefly discussed, and it was stated that Mendel in his experiments 

 always chose his characters in pairs, so that they would be distinctly 

 differential and capable o± definite recognition in the offspring. The 

 more clearly defined the differences between the parental characters, 

 the more marked will be the single characters in the resulting offspring. 

 The fourth point in Mendel's method is said to be distinctly new, and 

 that is the crossing together only of dominant and rece>sive characters. 

 If one of the characters of the diff"erential pair is always distinctly 

 dominant over the other, the latter is known as the reces-sive character. 



