Feb., 1913. The Queensland Naturalist. 249 
and breeder of animals on the other. Their value to one of 
these classes at least will appear frorn the fact that the two 
last International Conferences on Genetics* held in London 
and Paris respectively, were both under the auspices of most 
important horticultural organisations. 
In fact, with regard to heredity — (1) the direct obser- 
vations of Mendel, the conclusive evidence of a rigid 
experimental inquiry, and the inferences based thereon 
expressed in the law of dominance, that of disjunction and 
that of the independence of transmissible characters etc, ; (2) 
the facts disclosed to Her twig and Strasburger in the course 
of their profound microscopical studies of the living cell ; 
(3) and the application of the mathematical law of probability 
to the variables figuring the experiments alluded to, concur 
in showing that plants at least may be raised with any 
definite transmissible character ; (even such as fiorM 
precocity, cold resistance, drought resistance, disease 
resistance, as well as more obvious physical ones'), that their 
progenitors exhibit, fixed and determined and thus, that 
results of great practical value may be won, from a province 
of biology the most abstract, and one apparently the most 
remote from the field of application. In fact, at the hands 
of M. W. Bateson we find cereal types arising that whilst 
possessing other esteemed qualities exhibit great resistance 
to rust occurrence, as the outcome of the practical application 
of Mendelism. 
Earlier than this the rearing of plants, exhibiting a 
high standard of excellence in special qualities, had been 
accomplished by the application of other principles of biolog- 
ical science. In the course of his investigations at the 
Svalor Experiment Station, Dr. Nilsson had discovered 
(I) that what is ordinarily styled a breed or variety of wheat 
is in reality made up of a large number of distinct types, 
resembling each other sufficiently to be distinguished in the 
bulk from the types of other breeds, but nevertheless having 
important pjints of difference, and which are capable in 
skilful hands of being maintained apart in isolated individual 
plants ; and further (2) that these new forms thus derived 
when sown thus apart always maintain the characters that 
had distinguished them. Hence (3) he conceived the idea 
that if progress in breeding was to be certain and rapid, it 
must start from a single ear, and that thenceforth subsequent 
selection was unnecessary. In Europe the recognition of 
these facts is said to have produced during the last 20 years 
great results in wheat breeding ; and this also may be said 
of barley — barley for malting purposes especially. 
In raising animals of definite type, by crossing, there are 
at present some obvious structural di-hculties in applying 
the laws of Mendel, but the researches of the Russian savant. 
