xin PLANT-BREEDING 155 



who are interested in knowing who are successful 

 in doing. 



We shall consider here, then, first some experi- 

 ments on breeding plants which as yet have had 

 very little practical result. They are an attempt 

 to wrest one of her great secrets from Nature the 

 secret as to the relation between one generation of 

 plants and the next. When we know that secret, 

 we shall be able to do almost what we will with 

 our cultivated plants and animals, to do it directly, 

 and not with the stumbling slowness which is still 

 the method of to-day. 



Meanwhile the work of the Abbot Mendel, to 

 which we shall refer directly, is a beautiful example 

 of scientific work, undertaken out of pure love of 

 knowledge, and carried out with that perseverance 

 and single-mindedness which make genuine scientific 

 work truly great, whatever its practical result. 



Before speaking of Mendel's experiments, how- 

 ever, let us stop to say a few words about the 

 human aspect of scientific work. It is often very 

 difficult for us to understand what scientific work 

 means in the life of the man who does it. We 

 read that so-and-so worked for perhaps ten or 

 twenty years, and at last he arrived at such-and- 

 such results, but we do not realise clearly that it 

 was a human being like ourselves who did all this. 

 We do not see clearly that it was a man who got 



