CHAPTER X 



CONCLUDING CHAPTER 



IN the preceding chapters a considerable variety of 

 topics has been dealt with; and in spite of the fact that 

 all are more or less intimately connected with the 

 study of organic evolution, the nearly historical order in 

 which the subject-matter has been in great part pre- 

 sented has inevitably rendered the treatment a little 

 disjointed. 



The method we have so far adopted serves to illus- 

 trate the state of transition in which our studies 

 stand, and which it is our first object to assist in 

 hastening to a close the transition between the specu- 

 lative philosophy of evolution and the exact science of 

 genetics. 



Future treatises on genetics will make a fair beginning 

 with the law of Mendel, and will then deal with the 

 application of this law in detail ; and in this concluding 

 chapter we may adopt the same method, and proceed 

 to show how Mendel's discovery affords the connecting- 

 link between the various divergent branches which we 

 have already sketched in outline. 



The central generalization, then, around which the 

 subjects considered in the preceding pages are found 



264 



