THEORIES IN PRACTICE 351 



truth regarding the tendency of heritable char- 

 acters to be segregated and recombined in the 

 second-generation hybrids that had come so 

 often under my observation that it had become 

 a commonplace to me many years before the 

 publication of this catalogue in 1898. 



Elsewhere I have stated that the matter had 

 been the subject of controversy with a good 

 many of the leading botanists and horticulturists 

 of the world, and that during the period of per- 

 haps fifteen years prior to the rediscovery of 

 Mendel's experiments, I apparently stood in a 

 minority of one in the belief that such segrega- 

 tion and redistribution of characters in the sec- 

 ond-generation hybrids is the usual and all but 

 habitual method of inheritance. 



After DeVries and his fellow workers had 

 come upon Mendel's earlier publication and 

 made it known to the world, the matter was no 

 longer in dispute. 



But then the neophytes who had so long 

 refused to listen to my claim were disposed, after 

 the manner of neophytes, to become overenthusi- 

 asts, and some of them at least thought that the 

 principle of the segregation of heritable charac- 

 ters in the second generation was one that must 

 supplant all other principles of heredity, reduc- 

 ing questions of inheritance to such simple for- 



