Darwinism and Experimentation in Botany. 101 



A similar lack of immediate development is to be ascribed 

 to the discoveries of Gregor Mendel (1866), as to alternate 

 inheritance, which now play such an important part in studies 

 in heredity. Mendel's experimental cultures led him to recog- 

 nize that certain general principles or modes of behavior as to 

 dominance, latency and recessivity, single comparable or 

 antagonistic qualities prevailed when two strains were united in 

 hybrids, ?nd the interpretation of the phenomena involved has 

 yielded conceptions basic to the entire subject of heredity. 

 No benefit accrued from them, however, until they were re- 

 discovered a quarter of a century later, largely by reason of the 

 fact that Mendel's work was not made known to the scientific 

 public, but it is doubtful if the promulgation of his results earlier 

 would have been followed by any immediate advance, since 

 they lay so entirely outside and away from the ordinary course 

 of thought of naturalists. 



Darwin's methods were so purely inductive and his conclu- 

 sions were obtained so directly by interpretation of known 

 facts, that he was averse to anything approaching the method 

 of speculative philosophy as represented by Herbert Spencer. 

 No greater tribute could be paid to him than to recognize that 

 the inexorable logic of his own mental processes quickly carried 

 him into the ways of the experimentalist, and no sooner had his 

 interest been fastened upon certain phenomena than he began to 

 arrange cultures, comparative trials and experiments dealing 

 with many important problems in physiology, and bearing upon 

 almost every phase of heredity and descent, and he assiduously 

 set about their execution while the greater number of his fol- 

 lowers were still engaged in a conflict of words and a maze of 

 phrase construction. In "Animals and Plants under Domesti- 

 cation," "Habits and Movements of Climbing Plants," "Power 

 of Movements in Plants," "Insectivorous Plants," "Cross- and 

 Self-Fertilization in the Vegetable Kingdom," "Different Forms 

 of Flowers on Plants of the same Species," and "Formation of 

 Vegetable Mould by the Action of Earthworms" the results of 

 some of this experimentation are given, while in "Life and 

 Letters" it may be seen that his unexecuted plans in research 

 touched upon almost every phase of evolutionary development 

 suggested in the "Origin of Species." 



Concluded in June Number. 



