MENDELISM IN GREAT BRITAIN 



Careful Experiments Being Carried on in Many Ways to Determine Operation 

 and Limitation of Laws of Heredity— First Researches Purely Experi- 

 mental, but Intensely Practical Ones Now Being Made 

 by Numerous British Men of Science 



R. C. PUNNETT 



The Arthur Balfour Professor of Genetics in the University of Cambridge, England. 



THE dramatic discovery of Men- 

 del's work on plant-hybridiza- 

 tion in 1900 inaugurated a new 

 era for the breeder of plants and 

 animals, and the opportunities for ad- 

 A'ance in the knowledge of heredity were 

 in no country more rapidly seized than 

 in Great Britian. The seed here fell 

 upon prepared soil, for the problems to 

 which Mendel found a key had already 

 begun to engage the attention of Mr. 

 Bateson and of Miss Saunders in Cam- 

 bridge. The account of the experiments 

 which they had started in 1897 and 

 ]jublished as the well-known first report 

 of the Evolution Committee to the 

 Royal Society in 1902 was the most 

 important contribution to the subject 

 since Mendel's own paper, and was the 

 first to open men's eyes to the vast 

 possibilities latent in Mendel's work. 

 A group of workers rapidly gathered 

 round Bateson in Cambridge, and the 

 contrilmtions to be found under the 

 names of Doncaster, Gregory, Lock, 

 Staples-Browne, Miss Durham, Miss 

 Wheldalc, and others bore witness to 

 the activity of the rising school of 

 genetics in the University. 



All this work, like Mendel's own, was 

 designed and carried out purely with 

 the desire to gain definite knowledge of 

 the workings of heredity, and little or no 

 attention was ])aid to the economic 

 results which might flow from the aj)- 

 plication of this knowledge to the affairs 

 of those who l)red animals and ])lants 



for profit. The material for study was 

 selected on the ground of its cheapness, 

 of the ease with which it could be 

 worked, and of its suitability for giving 

 a speedy answer to the problems put to 

 it. Sweet-peas, mice, stocks, moths, 

 snapdragons, and poultry — such was 

 the material investigated, and except 

 for the last-named it could hardly be 

 said to possess much economic import- 

 ance. 



CEREAL IMPROVEMENT. 



But it so happened that the stimulus 

 to genetic work coincided with the 

 rapid rise of the School of Agriculture 

 in the University, and the enormous 

 practical importance of the new knowl- 

 edge was immediately appreciated by 

 Professor Biffen, who was then starting 

 his now-famous experiments in the 

 crossing of cereals. By making use of 

 the methods of Mendelian analysis he 

 was able to show that such qualities as 

 strength, yield, and immunity to rust 

 were transmitted in accordance with 

 Mendel's law of segregation, and conse- 

 quently are under the control of the 

 investigator, who can now devise suit- 

 able experiments for combining them 

 together at will. Improved wheats of 

 this kind have alreadx' come into use in 

 England, and, judging ])y the com])eti- 

 tion there is to secure the seed, they 

 have already proved themselves a great 

 success. The analysis of the wheat- 

 l)lant is still being actively carried on 



" Reprinlcd from the Bulletin of Aj,M"iciillural InldliKt;ncc and Plant Diseases of the In- 

 ternational Institute of Agriculture, Rome. 



86 



