162 THE FARMER OF TO-MORROW 



policy of encouraging agriculture, yet only in 

 the last few years has it come into prominence 

 as a factor of considerable importance. Its 

 sphere is not only to extend agriculture over 

 ill-favored areas that do not respond to ordi- 

 nary crops and methods, but also to furnish 

 parent stock for breeding strains that will in- 

 crease the productiveness of fertile acres. 



Here primarily is a task for the student, the 

 trained specialist, to test and apply the pro- 

 found hypotheses accounting for origin of 

 species. The discovery of the long-lost manu- 

 scripts of Mendel, the Austrian, thus giving 

 to the world his theory of dominant charac- 

 teristics, has opened new fields of research. 

 Hugo de Vries, and our native Cyril G. Hop- 

 kins, are other individuals whose work is be- 

 coming of large significance. It was the theory 

 of Darwin that plants and animals are able to 

 develop individual characteristics only as the 

 result of environment and heredity, and then 

 only over long periods. A deserving thinker 

 who painstakingly cut off the tails of fifty 

 generations of mice, only to find a large and 

 fully developed tail on the fifty-first generation 

 added nothing to the thought of the world, al- 

 though something to the humor. Yet Dr. 



