162 Kansas Academy of Science. 



covery of Gregor Mendel, a monk of the monastery of Brunn. 

 Born in 1822, he studied natural history in 1851-'53 and became 

 interested in the problems of hybridism, and conducted his classi- 

 cal experiments upon the common edible pea up to 1865. Although 

 the contemporary of Darwin, it is curious that neither knew of the 

 other's work. But as Mendel published but little, his work did 

 not become generally known till 1900, years after his death, when 

 it was discovered in obscure journals, and has been repeated and 

 verified by many experimenters since. According to Mr. R. C. 

 Punnet's book on Mendelism, the classic experiments were first 

 conducted on varieties of the common pea. He bred tall and dwarf 

 varieties of the pea together, and the first offsprings were all talL* 

 These were then crossed, and both tall and dwarfs appeared in the 

 second generation, in the proportion of three tails to one dwarf. 

 Hence he called the tallsthe "dominants" and the dwarfs "recess- 

 ives." From these seeds he got dwarfs that bred true in the third 

 generation, but the tails gave some that bred true and others gave 

 seeds that produced both tails and shorts, in the proportion of 

 three to one as before. Subsequent experiments with gray and 

 white mice gave the same results, the gray being dominant and the 

 white recessive. These proportions, with varying details, have 

 been borne out by thousands of experiments with all kinds of 

 plants and animals since that time, by investigators and breeders. 

 As Mr. Punnet says (p. 60) : 



"The phenomena are of great scientific interest, and the facts elicited 

 by Mendel and others cannot but affect our conceptions of the nature and 

 origin of living beings. Of the fact of evolution we are certain; of the 

 workings of natural selection we have no doubt. But as to the nature of 

 the variations upon which selection works there is much diversity of opin- 

 ion. The discoveries of Mendel must greatly influence our conception of 

 the part played by the different forms of variations in the evolutionary 

 process. . . . (Pp. 72-74:) We now recognize discontinuity in inherit- 

 ance as well as in variation. Once a new character has arisen as a muta- 

 tion, only selection can eliminate it. Mendel's discovery has led us to alter 

 materially our ideas of the evolutionary process. . . . Evolution takes 

 place through the action of selection upon the common mutations. Where 

 there are no mutations there can be no evolution. How and why these mu- 

 tations arise is the great outstanding problem of biology." 



A remarkable recent work was Dr. Frederick A. Woods's, on 

 " Heredity in Royalty," a sociological study of history, in which the 

 privileged class of royal families was taken, as the records are so 

 complete for several generations. (Am. Anthrop., 1909, 529.) 

 They were a high class with a favorable environment. Doctor 

 Woods assumes that the mental, moral and physical make-up of 



