124 HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF NEW YORK. 



The Chair: Professor Bailey was perhaps somewhat unfortunate in the subject of 

 his experiments. 



L. H. Bailey: I believed, and I became convinced before I came through, that 1 

 had got hold of the wrong topic. It was too large for me, and I believe that one to take 

 up the discussion of the Cucurbits and variation through hybridization has got first to 

 be well grounded in many simple things. And from the point of view that I occupy 

 now I believe it is one of the last things for a man to take up to work with. I quite 

 agree with what Mr. Bateson has said, that if I could work the thing over I might be 

 able to discover some kind of law governing these facts, but looking it over now, I can't 

 do so. All I know now is that I got lots of things, I don't know how. 



T. V. Munson: I don't know whether I can say anything that would be of further 

 value on this discussion, but it does occur to me that we are apt to spend a great deal of 

 time in discussing theories without arriving at any solution. It has come to me in my 

 own work that the matter of hybridization is entirely too extended for us to begin to 

 establish a general law. There are some intimations of existing laws in the work, but 

 we find that whenever we begin to discuss those so-called laws, as Mendel's, we 

 end with a great deal of pro and con discussion without solution, without a satisfactory 

 conclusion. It appears to me like this: that everything in the entire organic world — I 

 might make it universal — with reference to form, is the result of environment, and in 

 that I include the subject itself as a part, a §mall part, sometimes a very large part, of 

 the environment, and what we are looking at is what has produced this result. It is a 

 result that has partly come out of the individual under view and the effects of the sur- 

 roundings upon that. Now, in working upon plants, I think we should not confine our 

 views entirely to a biological standpoint, but that we are all the time tracing chemical 

 influences. There is a chemical laboratory in every plant and chemical changes taking 

 place. Each variety of fertilizer given the plant produces its effect in taking up and 

 elaborating the substances, and in carrying on those chemical changes it evidently brings 

 about its own result. So that we might say there is one general law. It seems to me 

 that in every direction I have observed in my work the result has come out of a set 

 of surroundings of the environment. And when we study the environment, the soils 

 we are using, the moisture in the atmosphere, the temperature, all those conditions have 

 some influence. If we undertake to make a general application of such a law or so- 

 called law as that of Mendel, which is, I think, a very small law — laws are of different 

 capacities; some reach very far and others but a very little distance— Mendel's law ap- 

 plies to pure seedlings through several generations. Suppose, instead of using pure seed- 

 lings, we continue to hybridize each generation, and we have many other ways of pro- 

 ducing varieties, applying other influences. This, then, has a very narrow limit to the 

 hybridizer wishing to employ all the different influences that he may see fit to employ. 

 So that, in spending time upon discussing this one small law, or a very short reaching 

 law, we may overlook more general laws, and we shall be more likely to reach results if 

 we collect facts, put them where the experimenter can use them, and show the extent to 

 which we have absolutely proven. Then, like Kepler, after a time (and I don't think 

 that time has yet arrived to establish any great number of laws in hybridization), we can 

 probably draw some more general laws. Then I think our most practical direction in 

 which to work is to collect facts, strive always after something that is useful, 

 something that is practical, and make notes of every influence, everything obtained, and 

 on these facts will grow laws that are exceedingly valuable. It is true we want laws; 

 we want something by which we can guide ourselves in this work; but if you try to 

 make a law out of a mere theory which is only set up for experimentation you are 

 wasting time. 



