408 



The Journal of Heredity 



comes from the metabolism of food that 

 he has i)revioiisly eaten. His potential 

 ener^\' is the food stored up in his body, 

 particularly the glycogen in the liver 

 and muscles. 



Why, then, can one man run faster 

 than another? Mr. Redfield thinks it 

 is because the sprinter has, by previous 

 work, stored up energy in his body, 

 which carries him over the course more 

 rapidly than the sluggard who has not 

 been svibmitted to s^'stematic training. 

 Such a view is preposterous. The dif- 

 ferences in men's ability are not due to 

 the amount of energy they have stored 

 up, but to differences in their structure 

 (using this word in a very broad sense) 

 which produce differences in the effic- 

 iency with which they can use the stored- 

 up energy {i. e., food) in their bodies. A 

 fat Shorthorn bull contains much more 

 stored-up energy than does a race- 

 horse, but the latter has the better 

 structure — coordination of muscles with 

 nervous system, in particular^ — and there 

 is never any doubt about how a race 

 between the two will end. The differ- 

 ences between the results achieved by 

 a highly educated thinker and a low- 

 grade moron are similarly differences in 



stioictural efficiency; the moron may 

 eat much more, and thereby have more 

 potential energ}', than the scholar, 

 but the machine, the brain, cannot 

 utilize it. 



The effects of training are not to store 

 up energy in the body, for it has been 

 proved that work decreases rather than 

 increases the amount of energy in the 

 body. How is it, then, that training 

 increases a man's efficiency? It is 

 obviously by improving his "structure," 

 and probably the most important part 

 of this improvement is in bringing about 

 better relations between the muscles 

 and the nerves. To pursue the analogy 

 which Mr. Redfield so often misuses, 

 the effects of training on the human 

 machine are merely to oil the bearings 

 and straighten out bent parts, to make 

 it a more efficient transformer of the 

 energy that is supplied to it. 



The foundation stone of Mr. Red- 

 field's hypothesis is his idea that the 

 animal by working stores up energy. 

 This idea is the exact reverse of the 

 truth. While the facts which Mr. 

 Redfield has gathered deserve much 

 study, his idea of "Dynamic Evolution" 

 need not be taken serioush'. 



Plant-breeding in Russia 



The advancement of genetics in 

 Russia is principally dependent on the 

 Bureau of Applied Botany of the 

 Ministry of Agriculture, which was 

 founded in 1S94 and completely reor- 

 ganized in 1907 on the lines of the 

 American Bureau of Plant Industry. 

 vSince 1904 it has been directed by 

 Robert Regel. The bureau's monthly 

 Bulletin of Applied Botany, which is 

 published in Russian with abstracts of 

 important articles in English or French, 

 gives (December, 1916) a summary of 

 the work accom])lished by the bureau 

 to date, which shows a great deal of 

 fvnidamental investigation in plant- 

 breeding, as well as attention to the 

 practical jjroblems which are always 

 pressing. It may be added that fifteen 

 of the Russian government's i)lant- 

 breeders are members of the American 

 Genetic Association. 



One of the important accomplish- 

 ments of the bureau is the translation 

 and publication in Russian of plant- 

 breeding literature. In this way most 

 of the five volumes of Fnnvirth's 

 monvmicntal work on plant -breeding 

 have been made available for Russian 

 workers, with man}' other treatises on 

 special subjects. Mendel's writings 

 and some of those of Baur, ShuU and 

 other geneticists have also been trans- 

 lated. 



The greatest genetic work of the 

 bureau has naturally licen to study the 

 varieties of cultivated ])lants of Russia, 

 isolating the best pure lines froni these 

 for dissemination. The extensive ac- 

 count of this which the Bulletin publishes 

 indicates that the work has been of 

 immense value to Russia, and may be of 

 great value to other countries with 

 similar climates. 



