BIOLOGY, EXPERIMENTAL — DAVENPORT. 93 



While there can be no doubt of the practical importance of applying the 

 known laws of evolution it would seem to be unwise for this station to 

 devote its time to such work. There is no lack of practical workers. 

 There are 56 State agricultural experiment stations where they may be 

 found. Also the Federal Department of Agriculture maintains many 

 practical breeders in the bureaus of Animal Industry and Plant Industry. 

 Congress appropriates about $25,000 a year for the experimental gardens 

 of the Department of Agriculture and $20,000 for the Arlington Experi- 

 mental Farm. Finally there are thousands of plant and animal breeders 

 in this country who are applying with more or less intelligence the estab- 

 lished principles of the improvement of races. But all of these experiment 

 stations and the individual breeders are held closely to work yielding 

 immediate practical results. They apply known laws ; they have no time 

 or facilities for investigating in a calm and extended way those subjects 

 that shall best reveal new laws. The work even of our experiment sta- 

 tions stands at the plane where it has been put by the workers in pure 

 science. Their work in plant hybridization depends on the discovery of 

 the sexual nature of the floral organs made over a century ago by the 

 botanist Kolreuter and on the method and principles of crossing investi- 

 gated by the plant physiologist Knight. Mendel, working in his cloister 

 garden, was not concerned with making plants more beautiful or useful. 

 But he established a new principle which is of inestimable value to breed- 

 ers. He discovered the principle forty years ago ; but it was overlooked 

 by the practical breeder, and through thirty-five years of practical work 

 was never rediscovered by the thousands of breeders or the scores of 

 experiment stations. Now that attention has been directed to it it is 

 being constantly used by practical men to get useful results. Had Mendel 

 spent his time in improving some plant he would doubtless have suc- 

 ceeded, but he would have failed to discover his law. Mendel failed to 

 accomplish the commonplace, but succeeded in discovering the new guid- 

 ing principle. 



So in the case of this Department. We could easily produce new and 

 valuable races. We could do all these things with certainty by the appli- 

 cation of well-known and constantly employed principles. But we prefer 

 to risk certain results for the uncertainty of attaining new principles. A 

 new theory may well be of much greater value than any improved race of 

 plants or animals. It may affect the whole live-stock business whose cash 

 value in America is very great. This commercial aspect is, however, 

 rarely to be thought of. We propose to leave the question of application 

 to others, bending our whole energy to our main work— the discovery of 

 general principles or laws. 



Our first two summers were largely spent in preparation for our work. 

 Methods, many of them new, had to be perfected. Results are now com- 



