THE WHITE BLACKBERRY 341 



A knowledge of Mendelism may be called the 

 A B C of plant breeding, and when it was first 

 advocated in America at the International Plant 

 Breeding Conference in New York, October 2, 

 1902, it was generally thought by those who had 

 little or no knowledge of the results of experi- 

 mental evolution that those who had been pro- 

 ducing plants and animals of superlative value 

 were far behind the times and would immedi- 

 ately be outdistanced by those who adopted the 

 new theory in experimenting — in fact, the prac- 

 tical and eminently successful breeders were 

 looked upon by many of those who were enthu- 

 siastically advocating the new theory as blind 

 workers. Many of these theoretical breeders who 

 were more or less without much practical experi- 

 ence or knowledge of the results of a careful ex- 

 perimental study of heredity, variation, hybrid- 

 ization, etc., made many public statements of 

 what they had planned and were about to do to 

 secure immediate important practical results. 

 Many of those connected with the experiment 

 stations and others were much carried away, and 

 promised to accomplish things at which the ex- 

 perienced breeders could only smile until the 

 awakening to the fact that nature's ways were 

 somewhat more complicated than they had been 

 led to believe. 



