74 REPORT OF THE CONFERENCE ON GENETICS 
but every day we had to give up a few,and nowI am sorry to say the 
book is almost empty. I speak for myself when I tell you that when I 
came to this Conference to hear of Mendelian theories I was rather 
doubtful ; but now that I have been so much with you, and have heard all 
that has been said, especially (if I may be allowed to say so) this morning, 
by Mr. Biffen, some of whose characters at first sight seemed to be 
strangers to Mendel’s laws, I am and will ever be an apostle of the 
theory. 
And now, ladies and gentlemen, I should like, representing as I do the 
National Horticultural Society and the Botanical Society of France, to 
invite you, if I may be allowed to do so, to come and hold your next 
Conference on Genetics in Paris. During the past few days we have heard 
about, and we have seen, the greatness and the power of your century-old 
Society. We in France are much smaller and fewer, much poorer and 
younger ; but all the same we will do our best to please you and to give 
you something, if not an equivalent, for what we have received, something 
that will give you a good impression of our country. I hope you will all 
come with papers. I cannot tell you exactly when that Conference will 
meet, but perhaps four years would give time to all the workers in 
heredity and hybridisation to make fresh experiments, to find new laws, 
and to make interesting communications. But as the International 
Botanical Congress also takes place in 1910, I do not think it possible for 
both events to take place in the same year. I will communicate with the 
organisers of that Conference as to their views, and try to fix a date in the 
year which will suit everybody, I ask you now to rise and drink the 
health of the Royal Horticultural Society, who have given us such 
a splendid reception during the past week. 
Sir Michael Foster said:—Sir Trevor Lawrence, Ladies, and Gentle- 
men,—I obey your summons, Mr, President, to rise to respond to the toast 
on behalf of the British guests, but I feel ashamed in doing so, I had hoped 
to be a diligent member of the Conference, but circumstances, public and 
private, made my attendance but very fitful. But this has its reward: it 
enables me to dissociate myself from the rest of the delegates, all of whom, 
I may say, fully deserve all the praise that has been bestowed upon them 
by Sir John Llewelyn. 
This Conference has been in many ways a remarkable one. It is a 
Hybrid Conference. It has represented the crossing of the efforts of 
many nations. While, however, many hybrids are sterile, this hybrid has 
been remarkably fertile, and indeed in so doing it has defeated its own 
purpose. The good results, the progressive results, became dominant in 
the first generation on Monday ; they remained dominant all through to the 
fifth generation this afternoon; and the mixed results, the misleading 
results, did not make their appearance at all. The bad results, the 
recessive results, gave the lie even to our friend Mr. Bateson, falsified 
his statement, and made his three-to-one, or whatever his ratio is, disappear 
altogether. May I take it that this bappy result is due to the fact that 
there has been unfettered activity on the part of each nation; that this 
Conference has not attempted to interfere or in any way to lay down lines 
as to what this observer or that observer, or this nation or that nation, 
should do? I myself do not believe in central international committees 
