196 BREEDING 



spring of eacli plant separately. And the reason for 

 this was, as before, that he did not know that " the 

 seeds " were the offspring of a plant. Mendel, who 

 of course knew this, laid the foundations of the 

 modern analytical method in the investigation of 

 heredity, because he perceived the importance of 

 tracing the offspring of each individual separately, 

 and of keeping the records of an experiment in such 

 a way that the ancestry and progeny of every indivi- 

 dual concerned may be looked up from them. Much 

 has been talked of the essential antagonism between 

 those methods which deal with individuals in the 

 mass and the Mendelian or analytical method. But 

 I have been unable to find that any such antagonism 

 exists. The analytical method is the only one by 

 which hereditary processes can be unravelled ; whilst 

 the significance of the numerical results of these 

 analytical experiments can only be estimated by 

 statistical formulae. Both methods appear to me to 

 be indispensable. 



Goss failed where Mendel succeeded. But the 

 lessons of failure are not less illuminating than those 

 of success, and the lives of those who fail not less 

 valuable or interesting than the lives of those who 

 succeed. Be this as it may, I was unable to resist 

 the temptation to satisfy my curiosity as to the life 

 of a man who, at any rate, spent part of his time in 

 work which has occupied much of my own. I 

 owe the following facts and the photograph of Goss's 

 garden to the kindness of the Rev. J. W. Banks, 

 vicar of Hatherleigh, Devonshire, 



