DRY LANDS AND FORESTS 115 



with the insight and clarity of genius. To-day 

 he is ranked with de Vries and Darwin, be- 

 cause of the new hypothesis he developed. He 

 established the fact that some of the characters 

 of both plants and animals are inherited un- 

 changed, passing down through each subse- 

 quent generation. Many of these dominant 

 characteristics may be hidden in the first gen- 

 eration and in a fraction of the descendants 

 of each subsequent generation. But these 

 dominant characteristics appear in pure form 

 in part of each generation after the first, so 

 that the descendants of two parents, both 

 showing the same trait, will continue to per- 

 petuate it. 



How does the Mendelian theory apply to 

 the extension of the floor space of the Ameri- 

 can farmer? 



Thus a bushel of wheat represents thou- 

 sands of characteristics of cross breeding. In 

 one branch of the complex ancestry there may 

 have been a strain of wheat with the charac- 

 teristic of germinating at low temperature. 

 If such were the fact, the discovery of this 

 characteristic among a dozen or a hundred 

 grains of the thousands composing the bushel 

 would enable botanists to revive the lost strain. 



