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HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF NEW YORK. 



contribute to permanency; as soon as selection is discontinued the form 

 again breaks up or reverts. De Vries' theory of mutations is, in a way, a 

 rephrasing of the old idea of sports. It differs in some essential points, 

 however. One is in the supposition that plants mutate or sport in periods, 

 and that in the intermediate epochs they are only making ready for another 

 mutation period; that is to say, there are non-mutation periods and muta- 

 tion periods. In the pre-mutation periods, be they long or short, the plant 

 produces incidental individual fluctuations or variations, but the great prog- 

 ress in variation is made in the mutation periods. This body of belief is 

 bound to challenge our accepted notions and our way of looking at the or- 

 ganic creation. This, together with Mendel's suggestions in respect to 

 heredity, promise to awaken the liveliest discussion during the next few 

 years. The speaker thought it probable that when these discussions shall 

 have passed their first stage of enthusiasm we shall return to the Darwinian 

 hypothesis, although he doubted whether we should ever hold to it .so com- 

 pletely and so strenuously as we have in the past. We are bound to make 

 distinctions between the kinds of varieties, classifying them either as indi- 

 vidual fluctuations and mutations, or, from another point of view, as quan- 

 titative and qualitative. In other words, it is probable that there are varieties 

 and varieties, and that not all of them are destined to have the same influence 

 on the phylogeny of the race. 



The general trend of the discussions at the meeting, he said, seemed to 

 be too exclusively along the line of hybridization, as if tliere were no other 

 means of breeding and improving plants. 



Mr. 0"Mara's remarks * were heartily seconded — the fact that good care 

 on the part of the grower is often more important than the variety merely. 

 Often a good variety may become a poor one, or a poor one a good one, by 

 the exercise of skill in the growing of it. Plant breeding alone cannot im- 

 prove our cultivated plants. It must be combined with all good care. 



O. F. Cook: I wish to raise one question, because I think that we should give our 

 predecessors credit for standing where they stood, in order that we may not accuse them 

 later of holding things which they didn't hold. We had, I think, a very conspicuous 

 instance in the case of Darwin. Darwin thought a great many things and was not 

 nearly as sure of a great many of them as many of his successors have been and he 

 is now frequently accused of having made mistakes which he never made, but which he 

 is accused of having made because they were made by other persons who have taken 

 the responsibility of representing him. I fear that this will be to a considerable extent 

 the case with Mendel. He took the precaution, I find, for which he deserves all good 

 credit, of saying when he announced his so-called laws, that these were things that hap- 

 pened with the peas which he cultivated and in his garden. He did not say that they 

 applied to all creation, or any other part of creation. He raised the question why in two 

 or three hundred experiments they did not all w'ork out the same way; he freely admits, 

 and he leaves the matter entirely open. It seems to me that it is hardly fair even to talk 

 about Mendel's law until we have reason to believe that it is a law and that it is at least of 

 wide application. It may turn out to be very much like many discoveries in physiology 

 and other new sciences, which are made to apply to the cases where the original investi- 

 gation was made, but that may not have any very wide application. 



W. Bateson: It gives me great pleasure to listen to the paper of Prof. Bailey, 

 which I am sure we all feel was most stimulating and enjoyable. I should like to say a 

 few words about the application of Mendel's law to these more complicated cases such 

 as those of the squashes and pumpkins which were made the subject of his paper. I am 



*See page 115. 



