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The brief reports which are here submitted relative to the work now in prog 
ress in t iu» several stations and the plans under consideration i'«»r the extension 
of this work, Indicate clearly thai this Beld of investigation, which has until 
recently been almost entirely neglected by the experiment stations, through 
various causes for which they have not been responsible, is soon to become one 
of the most interesting and profitable lines of Investigation. 
II. E. Summers, of Iowa. I may Bay that certain animals, Including the 
cavles, for instance, which have heen investigated <inite extensively, have been 
found in certain characteristics, viz. color, condition of albinism, and length of 
hair, to conform absolutely to .Mendel's law. I have myself a litter of four 
white cavies only two days old. from a white and colored mother, in which the 
pro! abilities under any other conditions than the Mendelian law would he 
almost too great to he conceived of. This is simply one illustration, and of 
course would not prove the law. hut it agrees with some thousands of exp< La- 
ments which have shown that the law applies. 
W. M. Hays, of Minnesota. Whether these conflicting reports are really con- 
flicting or based on experiments that really give the true comparison as to the 
operation of the Mendelian law, I can cite the following ease: An experimenter 
in England, I understand, worked on the color of some animals and found that 
it did not follow the Mendelian law, but he afterwards found that there were 
three component colors in that compound color, and when taken separately they 
did follow the Mendelian law, and that these were the unit characters while 
the component color was a variable character. Practically a parallel ease was 
found in the orchid grown by some English experimenter, in which the com- 
ponent colors operated in accordance with the Mendelian idea, whereas the 
blended color had not so operated. Experiments must first he made along the 
line of finding whether the characteristic in question is a dominant or unit 
character. 
N. S. Mayo, of Cuba, spoke briefly of that country as a field for the breeding 
and adaptation of animals. 
W. M. Hays. In the recent breeding school at St. Louis Doctor Cary, of 
Alabama, brought out the fact that he thought it might be possible to breed 
immunity to Texas fever in the southern belt, and that then quarantine methods 
might he used to gradually push the tick out of that country. Experiments 
have also l>een suggested along the line of breeding for at least comparative 
immunity from tuberculosis in cattle, thus lessening tuberculosis in man to 
some extent ; also the possibility of breeding for comparative immunity to swine 
plague in hogs. Some of the smaller animals can be used, no doubt, to illus- 
trate whether immunity can be reached by this method; for instance, rabbits 
are very subject to tuberculosis and they might be used in a preliminary 
experiment. Experiments are now being successfully made in the breeding of 
plants immune to disease. Professor Bolley has recently produced very 
pronounced results on flax. At the school in St. Louis Professor Bolley brought 
out with very great force the idea that if you want to breed for immunity the 
disease must be present in great quantity. Of course that is true of all breeding. 
We must breed as nearly as we can under the extreme conditions we wish the 
final product to withstand. 
The committee on nominations reported as follows: 
For members of executive committee, W. H. Jordan, of New York : C. F. 
Curtiss, of Iowa ; for chairman of section, H. J. Patterson, of Maryland : for 
secretary of section, M. A. Scovell, of Kentucky; for additional members of 
committee on programme, C. D. Woods, of Maine, J. F. Duggar, of Alabama. 
The secretary was instructed to cast the ballot of the section in favor of the 
persons so nominated. 
