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Mendelism. 



[JULY, 



MENDELISM, AND ITS APPLICATION TO 

 STOCKBREEDING. 



A. B. Bruce, M.A. 



Department of Agriculture, Cambridge. 



Signs are not wanting that the researches in the science 

 of heredity associated with the name of Mendel are awaken- 

 ing the interest of practical men. The appointment of the 

 leading expert in Mendelian research to the Directorship of 

 the Innes Institute at Merton suggests that horticulturists, at 

 any rate, anticipate that practical results are likely to follow 

 the application of the new methods to garden plants. That 

 agriculturists, too, are not behindhand in recognising the 

 value of the new science, as applied to the plants of the 

 farm, is shown by the recent appointment of Professor Biffen 

 as Botanist to the Royal Agricultural Society of England. 

 Professor Biffen's success in producing new and valuable 

 varieties of wheat is now a matter of common knowledge. 



The value of Mendelian methods, when applied to the 

 production of new varieties of plants, is both theoretically 

 and practically beyond dispute, but the application of these 

 methods to the breeding of animals stands on another and 

 different footing; results of economic importance have not 

 been achieved so far, and it is still doubtful, theoretically, 

 whether the new methods are applicable to the problems in 

 which practical men are interested. Stockbreeders, as a rule, 

 have not, up to the present, devoted much attention to the 

 matter, and it would seem that the mathematical aspect, which 

 finds a place even in professedly popular accounts of the 

 theory, is an obstacle which, to some minds, proves insur- 

 mountable. If, however, the facts, established by the Men- 

 delian school, be dissociated from the theories which have 

 been framed to explain them, there is nothing in the new 

 science that the ordinary reader need have any difficulty in 

 comprehending. 



In the first place, to clear the path, it is necessary to point 

 out that Mendelian methods and discoveries are concerned 

 with, and confined to, the inheritance of distinct and mutually 

 exclusive characters only. For example, a flower is either 

 coloured or white; colour and whiteness are an example of 



