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offer themselves ; for example, the British farmer has always prided 

 himself on his skill in raising breeds of plants and animals. Just 

 as one or two English types of wheat and turnips and clover are 

 recognised as yielding the heaviest crops, so the Shorthorn cattle 

 have spread from Teesdale the world over, the Clydesdale horse 

 is almost as plentiful in Canada as in his own country, and few 

 foreign flocks exist which have not somewhere a cross of Leicester 

 or Southdown blood. The methods by which the old breeders 

 worked formed the basis of Darwin's speculations on the origin of 

 species; now the debt of science is going to be repaid by the 

 enormously increased powers which certain recently discovered 

 laws of heredity have put into the hands of the breeders. 



'' Led by Professor Bateson, Cambridge has distinguished itself 

 by its working out the applications to practice of Mendel's redi- 

 scovered principles ; already some of the improved wheats there 

 raised have reached the stage of being put on the market ; the 

 florists, particularly the sweet-pea enthusiasts, have learnt to rely 

 entirely on the Cambridge work for their methods of raising and 

 fixing new varieties; while Professor Wood's work in crossing sheep 

 br eeds has demonstrated practically that desirable characters can 

 be selected from any and every breed and combined in one ideal 

 type. .Only time and continuity of work on a large scale are re- 

 quired. 



" At no period can we hope to dispense with investigation and 

 content ourselves with applying the knowledge that has already 

 been gained ; the most humdrum farmer following a routine con- 

 secrated by generations of practitioners may any day light upon a 

 problem which cannot be answered from the books but must be 

 solved by actual trial. New diseases are always arising; it is 

 within the experience of most fruit-growers that practically every 

 black currant plantation in England has been destroyed by the 

 "big bud" mite, a disease which had long been known, though 

 only of late years has it become virulent. The old grounds have 

 been rested and then replanted with clean and possibly disease- 

 resisting stocks of French origin, various other palliatives have 

 been resorted to, but no real remedy has been discovered, possibly 

 because the study of the disease has never been taken up in any 

 thorough fashion. Similarly, only a few years ago what had hitherto 

 been a harmless fungus living upon dung and similar decaying 

 matter suddenly developed, apparently in one place only, a power 

 of attacking the living cucumber plant. From that centre it was 



