PLANNING A NEW PLANT 



that I set no limits to the transformations I 

 attempted. In reality, my plan has always from 

 the outset recognized most definite limits — 

 although often enough the limits as I conceived 

 them were quite different from those that had 

 been set by theoretical botanists. 



Aid From Galton's Law 



In attempting to estimate the possibility of 

 improvement in a given form of plant life, it is 

 of value to recall the formula put forward by the 

 late Sir Francis Gal ton; a formula often spoken 

 of as Galton's law. 



According to this estimate, the hereditary traits 

 of any given organism are so intermingled that 

 we may assume as a general rule that offspring 

 of a given generation will inherit about half their 

 tangible traits from their parents, one-quarter 

 from their grandparents, one-eighth from their 

 greatgrandparents, and so on in decreasing scale 

 from each earlier generation. 



Stated otherwise, according to this rule, we 

 should be able by observation of the parents of 

 any given organism, to see presented half of the 

 traits of the offspring; but we may expect that 

 the offspring will manifest, as the other half of 

 their inheritance, traits that have come to them, 

 through the process of reversion or atavism, from 

 remoter generations of the ancestral strain. 



[17] 



