It is scarcely possible to pay too high a tribute
to the research work of the little group of Cambridge Mendelians, if one may so call them. Mr. Punnett has followed out as fruitful a line as Sir Rowland. It is, for example, largely owing to his ingenious experiments in so-called sex-linked inheritance, that a poultryman can now breed chicks whose plumage proclaims their sex at birth ; and the knowledge may be invaluable in the economies of the poultry farm, especially since the trade in day-old chicks took on wide dimensions. It is an old subject of discussion whether research students should, or should not, qualify their allegiance to pure science by utilitarian considerations. The Cambridge school have admirably demonstrated that the two may be fruitfully com- bined. Speaking quite without their sanction, I should say that the Cambridge investigators into Mendel's strange law have found the specific needs of the producer a guide and a stimulus rather than a handicap. If the sphere is a little narrowed there is full compensation in the greater precision
of the aim. * * * *
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