M,ENDELLAN MAavEts.
We have been entertaining, too—largely in London— an Imperial Agricultural Research Conference. One of their first visits was to Cambridge, where flourishes perhaps the
best school of heredity in the world. Sir Rowland Biffen—a real genius in his field—produces their new wheats for farmers (and new saxifrages for his garden) and Professor Punnett breeds Chinchilla rabbits (with fur worth up to LI a pelt) and poultry with sex-linked qualities. Both work wholly along the lines of the Abbot Mendel's great discovery ; and have pro- duced varieties—of wheat, of rabbits, of poultry—of real use to British farmers. Yeoman II. has helped to bring the miller round to an appreciation of the value of British wheat ; and poultry-lepers are definitely profiting by the various crosses of hens in which the cocks and hens are differently coloured at birth. Professor Baker in Leeds has used the same law to breed out the black patches from the valuable wool of the Wensleydale sheep. It happened on the eve of the visit of the Conference to this wonderful Mendelian farm that I heard some remarkable evidence of the use of this law by breeders of race-horses. Some believe that the most suc- cessful breeders of the future will be those who have most knowledge of the behaviour of the Mendelian characteristics in dams and sires. Certain surprising and unsuspected " recessive " characteristics are being discovered.
Previous page
