92 REPORT OF THE CONFERENCE ON GENETICS. 
make it desirable that people with our particular interests should 
occasionally confer. Genetics constitute a subject of vast range. Each 
worker can have experience only of some small part. Nevertheless 
the various phenomena are so closely interrelated that the centre of 
progress may shift rapidly from one part of the field to another. No 
one, therefore, can safely neglect the advances made in his neighbour’s 
territory. Sciences follow the plan of developing organisms in that they 
pass through stages of little differentiation, when parts are still doing the 
work of the whole. In these early stages inquiry must be comprehensive. 
The worker must be wary of narrowness. While he is engrossed and 
perhaps lost in the idiosyncrasies of orchids a discovery may be made in 
regard to peas, or it may even be mice or lepidoptera, which is just what 
the orchidist requires to clear away his own obstacles. Not even the time- 
honoured distinction between things botanical and things zoological is 
valid in Genetics, and I notice with satisfaction that though we meet as 
guests of the Royal Horticultural Society, and though by the nature of the 
case plants figure most in the bill, yet animals are by no means excluded. 
Now Conferences, especially those informal gatherings which are to 
make so pleasant a feature of our present programme, offer exceptionally 
good opportunities for the acquisition ‘of knowledge of this comprehensive 
character. In the course of these meetings we shall gain information and 
suggestions that would not be attainable by months of search in the best 
ordered library. 
There is another reason why the subject of Genetics is particularly 
appropriate to the deliberations of a Conference. I find this reason in 
the fact that practical and scientific workers here have equal need of 
each other’s aid. I hesitate to add that they have equal prospects of 
benefiting from the partnership; for while it is clear that the mind of 
the practical breeder is stored with the experience that the physiologist 
requires, it is less certain that the practical man would recognise that the 
scientific experimenter had much of great value toimpart to him yet. To 
this question of the practical evaluation of genetic discovery I will again 
refer, merely for the present noting the fact that two quite distinct classes 
of workers are interested in this one class of facts, and that such meetings 
give a capital opportunity for them to compare experiences and take stock 
of each other’s progress. For the success of our meetings it is essential 
that neither the practical nor the more strictly scientific aspect should 
unduly prevail to the exclusion of the other. There is then abundant 
reason for our coming together, and it is not without due sense of the 
importance of the occasion that I have accepted the great honour of pre- 
siding over your deliberations. 
In the few moments which I can now claim it is impossible to 
enumerate, and much more so to demonstrate, the genetic discoveries 
made by various workers, here and abroad, since last we met. Much of 
this information will be given in the papers communicated to the meeting. 
We have with us to-day several distinguished pioneers of these inquiries. 
We are looking forward to hearing them speak for themselves. 
It seems to me, therefore, that I shall most fitly inaugurate these 
proceedings by attempting with the utmost brevity to state the position 
which genetic inquiry has now reached. The difference between the 
