LUTHER BURBANK 



be segregated and recombined in the second gen- 

 eration hybrids that had come so often under my 

 observation that it had become a commonplace to 

 me many years before the publication of this 

 catalog in 1898. 



I have elsewhere stated that the matter had 

 been the subject of controversy with a good many 

 of the leading botanists and horticulturists of the 

 world, and that during the period of perhaps fif- 

 teen years prior to the rediscovery of Mendel's 

 experiments, I seemingly stood in a minority of 

 one in the belief that such segregation and redis- 

 tribution of characters in the second generation 

 hybrids is the usual and all but habitual method 

 of inheritance. 



After DeVries and his fellow-workers had 

 come upon Mendel's earlier publication and made 

 it known to the world, the matter was no longer 

 in dispute. 



But then the neophytes who had so long refused 

 to listen to my claim were disposed, after the man- 

 ner of neophytes, to become over-enthusiasts, and 

 some of them at least thought that the principle 

 of the segregation of heritable characters in the 

 second generation was one that must supplant all 

 other principles of heredity, reducing questions of 

 inheritance to such simple formula that the veri- 

 est tyro could master them, and having them in 



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