VII 

 THE FUTURE OF THE SCIENCE OF BREEDING 



To speak upon a subject prescribed by authority is never an 

 easy matter, and when the subject implies a knowledge of the 

 future it is apt to give one pause. For prophecy, as we all 

 know, cometh not by the will of man. But in my hesitation 

 I recalled that most eloquent chapter of Butler's in which are 

 set forth the views of the Erewhonians upon the future how 

 the future is already in the loins of the past, and how we can 

 but guess at what is coming by the tenor of that which we have 

 seen. If, therefore, I speak of the past it is of the past in its 

 anticipation of the future. And this I can the more readily do 

 because our past is so short that it is almost entirely to the 

 future that it belongs. 



Since the present century opened no advance in knowledge 

 among the biological sciences has been so momentous as that 

 which has taken place in the province of heredity and varia- 

 tion. Indeed the change of outlook has been so marked as to 

 bring about the use of a new term genetics for studies which 

 lie along these lines. The science of genetics concerns itself 

 with the phenomena whereby one generation of plant or animal 

 is linked with the generation preceding it and with the genera- 

 tion which follows with that which it begets and with that 

 by which it was begotten. It strives after the understanding 

 of that hitherto mysterious process whereby germ cell springs 

 from individual, and individual in turn arises from germ cell. 



It is common knowledge that our first real insight into this 

 process was due to Gregor Mendel. His masterly experiments 

 with peas led him to a conclusion which was as novel as it was 



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