LUTHER BURBANK 



recorded in the catalog of 1893 could not be at 

 once interpreted in what are now spoken of as 

 Mendelian terms, because at that time no one 

 knew anything of Mendelism as such. The experi- 

 ments of Mendel had indeed been made just thirty 

 years before, and Mendel himself, as it chanced, 

 had died in the very year — namely 1884 — ^in which 

 my first importation of plants from the Orient, to 

 furnish material for experiments, was made. But, 

 as the reader is aware, the publication of Mendel 

 was altogether ignored, and nothing was heard of 

 his experiments until his paper was rediscovered 

 by Professor de Vries and by two others about the 

 year 1900. 



But it is elsewhere pointed out that whereas 

 the Mendelian formula was not then in vogue, yet 

 the essentials of the aspect of heredity that Mendel 

 espoused were abundantly illustrated in the 

 hybridizing experiments, the results of which were 

 published in New Creations (1893) and its suc- 

 cessive supplements. 



It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader 

 that the essentials of the aspect of heredity in 

 question had to do, as stated by Mendel, not so 

 much with the great mass of heritable characters, 

 as with some of the minor points of difference that 

 mark varieties within a species. Mendel himself 

 did not hybridize different species, or, if he did, 



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