Mendel's principles of heredity : a defence / by W. Bateson ; with a translation of Mendel's original papers on hybridisation.

Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Mendel's principles of heredity : a defence / by W. Bateson ; with a translation of Mendel's original papers on hybridisation. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    thenceforth fixed [produced by union of similar gametes ?] that it takes longer to select some forms [dominants?] than others [recessives?], that there may be mule forms* or forms which cannot be fixed at allt [produced by uniou of dissimilar gametes?]. But Laxton tells us more than this. He shows us that numbers of varieties may be obtained—hundreds—in- calculable numbers. Here too if Professor Weldon had followed Mendel with even moderate care he would have found the secret. For in dealing with the crosses of Phaseolus Mendel clearly forecasts the conception of compound characters themselves again consisting of definite units, all of which may be separated and re-combined in the possible combinations, laying for us the foundation of the new science of Analytical Biology. How did Professor Weldon, after reading Mendel, fail to perceive these principles permeating Laxton's facts ? Laxton must have seen the very things that Mendel saw, and had he with his other gifts combined that penetration which detects a great principle hidden in the thin mist of exceptions, we should have been able to claini for him that honour which must ever be Mendel's in the history of discovery. When Laxton speaks of selection and the need for it, he means, what the raiser of new varieties almost always means, the selection of definite forms, not impalpable fluctuations. When he says that without selection there will be utter confusion, he means—to use Mendelian terms * For instance the tails produced by crossing dwarfs are such mules. Tschermak found in certain cases distinct increase in height in such a case, though not always (p. 531). t The remarkably fine but unfixable Tpea. Evolution. Laxton, p. 37.