THE MELTING-POT 89 



Countries were larger and, in the opinion of 

 eighteenth-century stock-breeders, better than 

 those that were in Britain before them, it was to 

 their descendants that men turned for stock with 

 which to improve their own. The Longhorns, 

 which were a combination of the Dutch and 

 several of the races in Britain before them, were 

 the great " improvers " till the end of the 

 eighteenth century, when they were ousted from 

 that position by the Shorthorns, and to some 

 extent, the Herefords, two breeds also of com- 

 posite character. But we shall better under- 

 stand the process by which some of our modern 

 breeds have been produced — the jumbling to- 

 gether, as it were, of different races and the 

 emergence of new types of stock — after a short 

 consideration of Mendel's theories, just as we 

 should better understand how certain salts may 

 be mixed together and new ones produced, by 

 some knowledge of chemistry. 



It is one of the greatest tragedies in science 

 that Mendel's ** Experiments with Plant Hybrids " 

 (" Versuche liber Pflanzen Hybriden "), which was 

 published by the Natural History Society of 

 Briinn in 1865, remained unknown till the present 

 century. It is impossible to imagine where we 

 should have been to-day in our knowledge of 

 heredity had Darwin only known of Mendel's 

 work. But Darwin's own discovery so entranced 

 the world that Mendel's was condemned to 



