CHAPTER XII 



THE ANTECEDENTS AND FATE OP MENDEL'S 

 DISCOVERY 



It may not be without interest to consider here how 

 it came about that Mendel's discovery, made in 

 1865, remained unknown until 1900, and to empha- 

 sise the fact that what constitutes a great discovery 

 is not the mere unfolding of a sequence of events 

 before the eyes of an observer, but the appreciation 

 of the significance, or perhaps the invention of a sig- 

 nificance, or the reading of a meaning into, this 

 sequence by the observer. 



To deal first with the first question. The prob- 

 lem of heredity, i.e. the question how the resemblance 

 between one generation and the next is brought 

 about, as it presented itself to biologists interested 

 in the matter at the time when Mendel worked, was 

 to determine how the characters of the parent got 

 into the germ-cells which produced the next genera- 

 tion. It was natural that the problem should pre- 

 sent itself in this way ; that the inquirer should start 

 with the grown parent, and wonder how its charac- 

 ters could be compressed into the minute germ, sub- 

 sequently to emerge and expand and develop into 

 the next generation. For, compared with the grown 



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