Work of Bateson and De Vries 



delusion that mutations or " sports " are rare in 

 nature, and that when these do happen to occur 

 they must of necessity be swamped by inter- 

 crossing. 



However, the discovery of the Abbe Mendel's 

 account of his experiments on breeding mongrel 

 sweet peas has opened the eyes of many 

 zoologists, so that they have at last learned 

 what practical breeders have known for untold 

 years namely, that sports have a way of per- 

 petuating themselves. Moreover, Mendel was 

 able to give a theoretical explanation of his 

 discoveries, with the result that the believers 

 in discontinuous variation have largely increased 

 in number of late. 



While we are unable to see eye to eye with 

 Professor Bateson in all things, we gladly recog- 

 nise the immense value of his work. Had his 

 statements in 1894 received the attention they 

 merited, zoological theory would to-day be con- 

 siderably more advanced than it actually is. 



Professor De Vries has gone farther than 

 Bateson, having engrafted upon the Darwinian 

 hypothesis the theory of mutations. He has 

 done no small amount of experimental work, and 

 has undoubtedly thrown much new light on the 

 ways in which species arise. He is purely a 

 botanist, so that he argues only from plants. 

 Nevertheless, we believe that some of his con- 

 clusions are applicable to animals. We are far 



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