CHAPTER X 



CONCLUDING CHAPTER 



IN the preceding chapters a considerable variety of 

 topics has been dealt with, and in spite of the fact that 

 all are more or less intimately connected with the 

 study of organic evolution, the nearly historical order in 

 which the subject-matter has been in great part pre- 

 sented has inevitably rendered the treatment a little 

 disjointed. 



The method we have so far adopted serves to illus- 

 trate the state of transition in which our studies 

 stand, and which it is our first object to assist in 

 hastening to a close the transition between the specu- 

 lative philosophy of evolution and the exact science of 

 genetics. 



Future treatises on genetics will make a fair beginning 

 with the law of Mendel, and will then deal with the 

 application of this law in detail ; and in this concluding 

 chapter we may adopt the same method, and proceed 

 to show how Mendel's discovery affords the connecting- 

 link between the various divergent branches which we 

 have already sketched in outline. 



The central generalization, then, around which the 

 subjects considered in the preceding pages are found 

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