NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE 



had before. Willing at all points to yield the 

 moment he was convinced of error, it was 

 yet inevitable that his own sound judgment 

 should tell him that when his vast experi- 

 ments developed results diametrically opposed 

 to the results of the scientists working in 

 circumscribed quarters, he was bound to 

 stand by his own. Twelve plants in a given 

 test might do certain things in concert and 

 thus apparently establish a law, but a hundred 

 thousand plants, indeed, sometimes a million 

 plants, in the same test by developing ab- 

 solutely contrary conclusions, utterly set 

 at naught the significance of the twelve. 

 This may very clearly be seen in the results 

 of his observations along the lines of the 

 so-called Mendelian Laws. 



Mendel, a parish priest in Briin, Austria^ 

 a devoted student of botany, prepared a 

 paper in the year 1865 in which he showed, 

 as a result of his years of investigation, that 

 certain laws were bound to obtain in the 

 breeding of plants. When two peas, for 

 example, were crossed, two prevailing sets 

 of characters or characteristics were developed. 

 One of these he called "dominant," certain 



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