REPORT OF THE CONFERENCE ON GENETICS. 97 
question sounds, but genetic research may answer it yet. Substances 
which excite disease or confer resistance, which preserve health or produce 
deformity, have been extracted, and it may not be more difficult to deter- 
mine the nature of those critical factors which excite hoariness or colour 
in a plant. 
It is not only the breeder of animals or plants who is concerned to 
know the truth about heredity. ‘The results of genetic research affect 
every branch of physiological or sociological inquiry. Too long has 
science been content to explore the specialised and outlying functions of 
the body and to neglect the primary, central, and all-controlling function 
of heredity, on which the rest depend. Such neglect manifestly arose 
from the curious delusion that the laws of breeding were untraceable. 
With the Mendelian renascence that dark age has ended. 
As a hopeful sign it may be noticed that in the United States the 
Carnegie Institution has lately equipped a station for the experimental 
study of evolution. In England, where through Darwin’s genius the 
study of evolution first became a reality, the country in which the art 
of breeding has for ages occupied a place unequalled in other lands, no 
such opportunities exist. The pursuit of these objects demands facilities 
of a special kind, such as neither technical colleges nor the laboratories of 
the Universities are able tosupply. Sooner or later, perhaps, an effort will 
be made to provide equipment of this kind in England. Whenever such 
an institution as that I contemplate comes to be designed, let it not be tied 
down to the pursuit of directly economical results. When someone says 
to me, “But can’t you breed a Derby winner, or do something useful ?’”’ 
the reproach does not break my heart. In parenthesis let me remark that 
though, in the attempt to discriminate among animals all good enough to 
win, science may be as much at fault as common-sense, yet it would not 
surprise me if science were to devise a way of breeding even race-horses 
which would not produce about a hundred wasters for one fit to win—and 
yet I understand that common-sense remains content with that rather 
modest attainment after two centuries and a half of steady trying. 
The great advances in the application of science have generally 
become possible through discoveries made in the search for pure know- 
ledge. Mendel’s incomparable achievement, with all that it imports both 
to science and to practice, was brought about by the resolute determination 
to get to the bottom of ome particular problem in hybridisation, a problem, 
too, without any very obvious practical concern, and we may rest assured 
that in no other spirit can natural knowledge be more profitably pursued. 
