101 



question of sex value, the relation of potential between male 

 and female, and when we read thees laws we had in our fields 

 a half hundred pig hybrids proving their truth and accuracy. 



We at once became Mendelian enthusiasts; for these were 

 the first proven laws for the guidance of heredity characters. 

 We do not now require Pearson biometries nor Galton tables, 

 but try to simulate the chemist, physicist, and astronomer by 

 direct application, borrowing the principles of exactness and 

 law from kindred sciences. 



With Mendel's laws we five years ago propounled the theory 

 of magnetic-polarity, the why-for of sex as shown by the 

 action of chromosomes at fertilization and thruout all the 

 mitotic divisions and reproductions of the cell, to old age in 

 the individual. And the theory has been established by other 

 lines of research under the more general name of "the electro- 

 chemic theory of life." This was well illustrated by Dr. Lillie 

 at the Boston meeting of the A. A. A. S. recently, in a paper 

 on fertilization, wherein he showed how the entrance of a 

 single sperm negatively polarized the egg against further en- 

 croachment. 



When we learned of Mendel laws, we had in our group of 

 pig hybrids much diversity and non-correlation of characters 

 on single individual hybrids, which told us that the conception 

 bf the half nuclei was an insufficient explanation. . Some ex- 

 perimenters and cytologists were claiming that the indepen- 

 dence of the finer division of these half nuclei — the chromo- 

 somes — were the origin of the independant unit characters that 

 showed a non-correlation with other characters from their four 

 grandparents. In our first reprints sent to Mendelian and 

 cytological workers, many of these men would advise us "to 

 go slow with the chromosomes as bearers of heredity; that we 

 are not yet sure that they are the vehicles." But further hy- 

 bridizing of strongly contrasted breeds and the aggregating of 

 three and four of these contrasted breeds in a single hybrid 

 brood has enabled us to almost count the chromosomes, and 

 convince ourselves, if none else, that they are the things that 

 do it. 



