62 THE LAND WE LIVE ON 



By Darwin's work — " considered a decidedly dangerous 

 book to old ladies of both sexes " — the mystery of hereditary 

 was somewhat cleared up by experiments in cross fer- 

 tilization. The improvement of cereal grain, more par- 

 ticularly of wheat b}^ hybridising, is a matter of utmo -t 

 importance, and a good deal of Mork has been done already 

 in this direction. A large number of hybrids of wheats 

 have been raised at the Minnesota Experiment Station, 

 and in ISew South Wales the late Mr. W. Farrer 

 produced a large number of cross-bred wheats, some of 

 which proved of considerable value. Similar work with 

 regard to fruits in particular has been done by others. 



Still the matter of breeding lacked a thorough 

 scientific basis, and the work was, as stated by Lindley 

 half a century ago, "a game of chance played between 

 man and plant," which, as a matter of fact, was always 

 largely in favour of the plants. 



The mystery has been solved by the exceedingly valuable 

 work of a monk, Gregor Mendel, of the Abbey of Briinn, in 

 Austria, who, as the result of eight years' painstaking experi- 

 ments, communicated to the Briinn Natural History 

 Society a paper on " Experiments in Plant Hybridisation.''* 

 This work was completely overlooked, and lay for 35 

 years in the archives of the Society, only to be re-discovered 

 in 1901, almost simultaneously by three scientists, de 

 Vries, Correns, and Tschermak. It was shown that the 

 work of the amateur botanist gave a clear and complete 

 theory Avith regard to the working of heredity, and based 

 on his researches and theories cross-fertilization reaches 

 almost the accuracy of mathematical science. Briefly 

 his theory is, that inheritance consists in the transmission 

 of independent characters — the Constant Characters— oi 

 which each species possesses a certain definite number. 

 These characters form pairs of opposites or alternatives. 

 The characters are distributed among the germ cells in 

 systematic manner, so that no germ cell will carry both 

 numbers of a pair. Biffen, of the Agricultural Depart- 

 ment of the Cambridge University, has taken the work up, 

 and has already obtained very interesting results in the 

 cross-fertilization of wheats and barleys. 



Botany is also of importance in the study of many 

 plant diseases. Smut and rust are very prevalent diseases 



