412 First European Journey 



to be "" swamped with rust " but when he came to examine it plant by 

 plant 07ie plant in four was entirely free from rust. There were several 

 hundreds of these plants "' without a pustule on them." He thinks that in 

 a few years we shall be able to breed wheats with any quality of grain and 

 productivity we desire and at the same time have them absolutely rust 

 resistant. Please show this to Mr. Carleton. I shall try to get some of the 

 X wheat for him to experiment with. 



You will find a report of the Conference in Gardeners' Chronicle for 

 August 4th and 11th. I go back to Amsterdam for some weeks tomorrow. 



Smith, aware of the " three and one " ratio significance of 

 Biffen's discovery in plant inheritance, attempted no evaluation 

 or prognostication of its future value to plant breeding or plant 

 pathology. This had been done by other speakers at the Con- 

 ference, by Biffen himself and by Dr. E. S. Salmon of the South- 

 Eastern Agricultural College at Wye, Kent, and the addresses were 

 to be published. 



The next year when Smith saw a note on a bacterial mangold 

 disease published by Biffen, he sent for material, and again asked 

 for " the wheat in question." The English scientist promised to 

 send the material and, as to the wheat, said that it "is immune 

 only to P[^uccima\ glumanim as far as I know. P. graminis," he 

 wrote, " is far from common here and rarely appears on my plots, 

 but late in the season flecks of it appear on the wheat often mixed 

 with P. dispersal 



Biffen's honors were many. He was knighted for the achieve- 

 ment, and in 1908 was appointed professor of agricultural botany 

 at Cambridge University. He prophesied to the Conference that 

 plant breeding thenceforth would be " conducted on the lines 

 which Mendel once for all laid out," that it would become highly 

 specialized, and be placed on " a fresh and a practical basis." 

 He exhibited hybrid wheats and barley,^" and Salmon, believing 

 it " impossible to overestimate the importance " of his discovery, 

 thought that " in those cases, as, for example, in the mildews, the 

 rusts, and probably many other diseases, where the place of the 

 decisive conflict between parasite and host is intracellular," he 

 had answered the important question whether the inheritance is 

 " determined by the ' constitution * of the plant " and, if so, 

 whether the constitutional characters, especially with reference to 

 susceptibility and immunity, are " Mendelian " in the ratio of 



'^^Rep't 3rd Int. Conj. on Genetics, op. cit., 33-37. 



